Chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg say fridge temperatures rose overnight, similar to hack of French stores
Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg have said the temperatures of their refrigerators and freezers in dozens of stores rose overnight, prompting fears of a cyber-attack similar to one that caused millions of euros of food losses in France.
Sweden’s Coop chain told the daily Aftonbladet on Monday that six of its stores had been affected, while ICA said it was “aware that a limited number of stores were affected by an incident overnight which impacted their refrigeration and freezer systems”.
imagine having a freezer that’s susceptible to a cyber attack. Why the fuck is it connected to the internet? All it needs is a thermostat. The closest thing to a “smart feature” that might benefit is the ability to send a notification if power fails or temperature falls below a set value, neither of which should be hackable by an outside party.
Even then, you can just have a battery powered thermometer connected for alerts. These have been available for a decade or more. No need to have the fridge involved at all…
Right!? Haven’t we had these solutions for commercial fridges/freezers for quite a while now? Why on earth did we bring the internet into it? 😅
To warn the technical department when the temperatures start rising and something is wrong. Sellers would not really pay attention to some fridge or freezer being warmer.
There are four ways of doing that:
Guess what option was picked.
That’s a great reason to be on an internal network, but it surely doesn’t need to be on the internet.
I mean, part of my job as a stocker of the frozen and refrigerated foods was checking to make sure the fridge and freezer’s temps were within spec every time I entered them, and to report if it was too warm or cold so it could be fixed.
Not to mention alarms and other ways of indicating issues. There could easily be a one-way signal that is inaudible to customers for example.
Yeah, there are a lot of things I’m supposed to check at work too