alt Hacker NewsThere are a bunch of good reasons to connect a commercial refrigeration unit to the Internet (via IoT). Notification when failover to the secondary cooling system happens, notification of when ambient temperature is too high, optimisation of energy consumption (especially after hours).
Doing it insecurely by, for example, having a device with a web server on the fridge is problematic. Not being able to deploy firmware updates. Having too much of the control loop exposed (as opposed to monitoring only), can lead to issues.
Service-oriented industries with costly assets will look to Internet connectivity for competitiveness and efficiency. It needs to be done better.
I didn't expect to spend so much time today thinking about fridges. I have so many questions. If it's all so connected and monitored and notifies of issues, couldn't it notify anyone that the settings are weird, like continuous 50 degree Celsius defrosting? How much access did the hackers have, apart from temperature controls? Could nobody intervene quickly before the damage was done? Was there a way to "unplug" the fridges or they would just keep frying, so they had to get people across all the stores doing manual resets?