r/news • u/templeofsyrinx1 • 9h ago
French supermarkets suffer refrigerator shutdown after 'unprecedented' cyberattack
https://www.afp.com/en/french-supermarkets-suffer-refrigerator-shutdown-after-unprecedented-cyberattack110
u/Sportsman180 9h ago
The fabric of society is feeling more and more frayed everyday.
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u/ctothel 9h ago
People making decisions - in government, business, and even in the voting booth - are less and less able to understand how the world works.
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u/A_pirates_life4me 9h ago
And those people are there because money is the major driver of influence around the world. We have built a society that values greed over everything else and then wonder why greed makes all the decisions.
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u/post_button_account 9h ago
You are the kind of person in the voting booth the previous comment is talking about.
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u/Realistic-Agent-1289 7h ago
Every single thing wrong with civilization is because of this primitive dog-eat-dog economy. Including progress halting religions.
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u/A_pirates_life4me 8h ago
Any basis for this assumption or are you just dumping thoughts from your shithole into the void
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u/monkeymetroid 9h ago
Thats certainly a 2026 headline. Its not about fridges, but id think twice before purchasing a "smart" range oven. Being able to remotely start a burner or oven poses risks that will never be worth the mild convenience.
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u/oviforconnsmythe 5h ago
I don't ever see myself buying a smart appliance, particularly a fridge of all things. At least for an oven/stove it gives you the peace of mind that you shut it off if you leave the house in a rush. Though your point about how disasterous it could be if there was a bug or security issue is valid.
That said, I can see at least some rationale in smart fridges in commercial settings, particularly in France (and more broadly, Europe). Electricity is expensive af in France, and in some cases has variable pricing based on peak/off peak schedules during the day/night. Being able to automatically pre-cool fridges during off peak pricing periods and making software controlled adjustments in real-time (more sensitive than typical thermocouples) could save the store serious money. Especially when multiplied over a large number of fridge/freezers. It's surely more reliable and cheaper than wasting an employees time manually adjusting everything....up until something like this security breach happens. But even then, the company that manages the automation said the companies didn't keep up with firmware updates, exposing the flaw.
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u/SSGASSHAT 50m ago
The "start things up from miles away" thing was really fun, when it involved Captain Kirk and General Grievous.
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9h ago
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u/monkeymetroid 9h ago edited 8h ago
If there are people motivated to go after your blink cameras, there will be people motivated to do actual dangerous malicious shit. Is the risk high? No of course not, but its also not worth it imo
Also, ai has empowered many more "bad actors" not all cybercriminals are oceans 11 levels of scale and not every "bad actor" is a human at a certain scale
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u/ohlookahipster 8h ago
They don’t use it to blow up your house. Hackers use smart appliances as ‘zombies’ in a larger bot net attack.
That Samsung smart fridge you glaze so much? It’s likely been used in a data breach. Hell, it was probably enlisted it in the recent Stryker attack on hospital EHRs.
Your smart oven could be used in the next oil pipeline hack without your knowledge.
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u/monkeymetroid 8h ago
That is a much more likely risk if one got compromised, but i was also pointing out the very rare "deranged individual" risk who is now able to utilize ai to actually harm people such as preheating a oven or turn a burner on (not sure you can do that one with current models) while people are asleep. A lot of the wrong type of individuals now have a much lower barrier of entry to enact their wills and are also able to scale their very scary amd psychotic motivations if enough work is put in. Anyone who think this is not possible have a rigid lack of imagination. Not being likely is not a good excuse for a worst case scenario at where the tech of ai agents are currently at.
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u/Spire_Citron 7h ago
Are they higher risk for that than a regular computer?
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u/Consistent-Throat130 6h ago
Yes, for lack of security patching and routine updates, iot stuff is often much easier to find a way into
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u/Flutes_Are_Overrated 6h ago
There's a search engine that scans open ports on folks networks. Right now, there are who knows how many in home cameras completely open to anyone who wants to look all because the security on them isn't set up right.
Are you confident the security on your always online stove will always be lock tight and some teenager with too much time on their hands won't sabotage it? I'm not.
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u/KeyMessage989 9h ago edited 9h ago
This happened to US bases recently too
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u/templeofsyrinx1 9h ago
I saw that, U.S. commissaries?
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u/KeyMessage989 9h ago
Yeah on multiple bases, I wanna say it’s a Swedish company that makes the fridges that are compromised
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u/templeofsyrinx1 9h ago
Don't see any mention of attribution for the attack and the Pentagon isn't saying much as usual
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u/HotBrownFun 8h ago
If they are reluctant to talk about it, it's probably Trump's best buddy, Putin
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u/Cold_Combination2107 6h ago
if its not by the same people, it could point to a common point of failure. id wait to see if this starts to affect anyone else too.
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u/KeyMessage989 6h ago
It’s likely the same manufacturer I would guess even if different actor. It likely is a manufacturer wide vulnerability
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u/Twizdom 9h ago
I always enjoy reading stories like this because generally speaking cybersecurity for infrastructure is obscurity. Like the guys setting this stuff up usually only barely have a clue about networking and are more mechanic than IT people.
Source: me, working on infrastructure reliant on wrenchturner who can operate a computer.
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u/Ok_Wall_8267 4h ago
Stop connecting simple machines to the internet
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u/FrogsMakePoorSoup 1h ago
It's called reducing the blast radius. Can't hack a basic light switch or an older car!
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u/seanpbnj 9h ago
Hybrid warfare eh? I wonder if the EU is currently facing any enemies that acknowledge using hybrid warfare.
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u/sealosam 9h ago
Why are hackers always nefarious? Can't they do something good for once like erase medical debt and mortgage data ffs?
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u/Temnothorax 8h ago
A lot of them are state actors, and few are going to risk felonies without a profit motive.
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u/bluemitersaw 8h ago
Because this is mostly likely Russia attacking France. Why would Russia want to wipe out mortgages???
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u/senecant 5h ago
Can you imagine the financial mayhem if Russia were able to encrypt all digital records of who owes them money?
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u/Ntroepy 3h ago
Well, there’s many thousands of “ethical hackers” that use similar tools and techniques as the nefarious hackers and focus on IT vulnerabilities.
Ethical hackers been critical in stopping or undoing ransomeware attacks, building free security tools, identifying MANY zero day vulnerabilities before criminals, and many other cybersecurity areas.
There’s also “hacktivists” who do use hacking to identify, report, and shut down criminal websites - particularly those involving sex trafficking or child exploitation.
I work in cybersecurity and we talk about ethical hackers quite often.
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u/ohlookahipster 8h ago
Hackers have been behind notable data dumps. There’s also grey hats who jump to the other side and help with vulnerabilities.
But most of these high profile hacks are going to be 1) driven by greed via ransomware, or 2) typically state sponsored. So we’re talking kids who want millions or the DPRK who does it for the love of the game.
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u/MikeTalonNYC 8h ago
Not unprecedented at all - the exact same attack hit US DoD commissaries in August, so very precedented.
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u/goodtower 7h ago
The most secure connection is the one you don't make. The most secure message is the one you don't send. Why does a refrigerator need an always on connection to the internet in the first place?
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u/DisenchantedByrd 9h ago
Just the usual cuplrit, large corporates not managing their infrastructure.
A source close to the issue said refrigeration control systems from Danish manufacturer Danfoss were targeted. Danfoss told AFP in a statement that most of the affected equipment was "legacy" products which "no longer receive software or security updates". It said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected, with a version of the former using "outdated firmware". It added that it had long advised supermarkets to update from those models.
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u/Drokstab 8h ago
Were they able to update without replacing the units? If it was a simple software update I understand but if they need to replace the units that's absurd.
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u/David_W_ 8h ago
Given the phrasing "update from those models" I'm betting it's a hardware replacement, not a software update.
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u/bluemitersaw 8h ago
Planned obsolescence and enshittification isn't limited to consumer products. It happens at all levels of business.
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u/templeofsyrinx1 9h ago edited 8h ago
I had a question how could some of these refrigeration units have their temperatures raised to 50 C 122F?
Edit: Ah...looks like they triggered some of the units to forcefully defrost. I guess that'll do it.
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u/Duideka 8h ago
I have had a controller fail on a freezer before and it was stuck on electric defrost and I came back to a freezer at 80c and everything inside cooking. The electric defrosts put out a lot of heat.
There are often also heat strips in the doors to stop the doors from freezing shut so if you cut off refrigeration things can get hot quick.
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u/aqui0423 9h ago
Didn’t Gilfoyle do something similar to tell Jin Yang’s fridge to go fuck himself? Once again, Mike Judge, somewhat, predicting the future
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u/Cold_Combination2107 6h ago
i wonder if this is at all connected to the us army commissary cyberattacks earlier this year? both were refrigerant attacks.
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u/Maxfunky 9h ago
Soon to be common-place thanks to how easy it is to abliterate GLM 5.3. Your grandma could pull of this type of attack now just by typing out the prompt. You'd have too set the machine up for her, but the set up process is literally the only barrier to entry to being able to do shit like this and a simple YouTube video could walk you through that. No exaggeration.
Welcome to the new world.
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u/templeofsyrinx1 9h ago
Still wondering about how much AI was used in planning the attack. Very curious.
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u/Murgatroyd314 1h ago
For those unfamiliar with the term, abliteration is the process of removing the concept of “I’m not allowed to do that” from an AI model. It’s surprisingly simple to do.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 7h ago
Why would you have your commercial refrigerators controlled via the internet?
This IoT bullshit has gone way too far. If you don't want strangers controlling your shit, don't put your shit on the effin internet.
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u/ahj3939 7h ago
Why wouldn't you? How else do you monitor and maintain them?
Do you have someone go by every hour and check the temperatures and call for repair when there is a failure? Will the be in the store 24 hours a day to perform this duty?
Or do you have an electronic system that is constantly monitoring not only the temperatures but also the internal operating parameters of the refrigeration system and log an alarm when something goes wrong? This could even preemptively catch a failure before a unit fails and all the food contained within needs to be thrown away.
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u/Opening_Classroom_46 5h ago
And again, he said controlled, yet you're going on a rant about monitoring. The 4 times a month an alarm for temp goes off you have an employee walk over to it and investigate.
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u/Sarge2008 4h ago
Do you have someone go by every hour and check the temperatures and call for repair when there is a failure?
I worked in the deli department of a grocery store when I was in college. We had a temp logbook that had to be filled out every 2 hours from open to close. It's not hard to have someone walk around the department and get temp readings from the cold cases and some of the prepared items.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 7h ago
How else would you monitor and maintain them?
Actual physical employees - as we've done for the past hundred years between the invention of refrigeration and the internet.
Do you really think they had remote internet monitoring all through the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s?
No, of course not. But you would rather some teens in Yugoslavia cook all the food in your freezers so you have to throw it all away.
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u/ahj3939 6h ago
Really it's ridiculous we're even using electric refrigeration. We got by just fine in the 19th century cooling with blocks of ice.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 6h ago
Of course we can expect you to get stupid with your response when you know you're wrong.
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u/ahj3939 6h ago
I'm not wrong. A chain of supermarkets having an automated system in place to monitor their critical systems is only logical.
What are the employees going to do when they take hourly temperature readings, fax them to headquarters?
Was there probably a lapse somewhere? Absolutely. Even if the device is vulnerable it shouldn't be exposed so that some Romanian hackers can probe and compromise the device.
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u/Opening_Classroom_46 5h ago
I'm not wrong. A chain of supermarkets having an automated system in place to monitor their critical systems is only logical.
This entire comment chain exists because you keep saying "monitor" in a thread that is talking about "controlling".
No one is saying don't monitor it, but it doesn't need the ability to be changed from 10 degrees to 90 degrees on a whim from someone half a world away.
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u/countable3841 6h ago
These people have no clue how modern commercial equipment works. They’d be paying people to stay up all night to be on fire watch instead of using commecial smoke detectors if they were in charge.
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u/triscuitsrule 8h ago
I worked in a grocery store when I was a kid.
Once the store manager was telling us that in the event of a long power outage (where even the backup generators fail), the first thing he’s doing is going to save the meat.
The meats in a grocery store are easily the most expensive and valuable items in the store.
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u/firesuppagent 6h ago
remember kids, whenever the media says unprecedented it means they really want you to read the story.
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u/iamnotyourdog 7h ago
So if this was Russia, when exactly does NATO feel the line is crossed for article 5?
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u/lee7on1 9h ago
lets connect everything to internet, what could go wrong?