Perhaps Connecting Fridges to the Internet Was a Bad Idea
The basic problem is that many fridges and freezers are now connected to the internet.
Key points
- But when connected to the internet, a scattered portfolio of freezers can be managed and sometimes even fixed remotely.
- Perhaps the most surprising aspect of these widespread fridge attacks is that they haven’t happened sooner.
- This has been the scene at grocery stores across Europe after their fridges and freezers have been hacked.
In the aftermath of the recent attacks, people have assumed the same is true for industrial fridges: Why on earth does a supermarket fridge need to be online?
The food that our fridges are protecting is extremely fragile; the machines themselves are quite complex; and qualified technicians are in short supply.
Additional details
- Once the hackers remotely broke into a system, they were able to take control of a heating element that can be periodically switched on to prevent frost from building up on the evaporator coils, which stops the freezer from working as effectively.
- For a home fridge, the benefits—a touchscreen that can show family photos, an interior camera so you can see what you already have while you’re at the grocery store—may not outweigh the security risks.
- But for the millions of supermarket chill cabinets, refrigerated trucks and shipping containers, and gigantic cold-storage warehouses that our food sits in on its way from farm to table, the calculus is quite different.
- Logistics companies are often required to demonstrate that food has stayed within a narrow temperature range while in their custody; the ability for a freezer to broadcast an alert if its temperature deviates from a set point at 2 a.m.
- Refrigeration units are always on—they have to run 24/7 by design—and a lot of today’s smartest devices provide the diagnostics that allow companies to perform predictive maintenance to preempt any potential issues.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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