So the author charitably calls the 2025 vulnerability a "login bypass", but it's much worse than that. The firmware included a "datetime-based password" mechanism: a built-in backdoor password, like it's the 90s again.
The original researcher published about this in August of this year [1], a year after reporting it, titling the report "Defrost the Food", which the attackers apparently took to be a good suggestion.
As the firmware is open for anyone to download [2], blurring the affected function seems more like an invitation to find out more. I know I was curious when the news about the fridges in France broke. The function's actually called "check_code_of_the_day", and this is the implementation:
I'm was super glad I could just copy/paste that code in my LLM-of-choice and it gave me a reasonable explanation of how to exploit it. Thank god an attacker couldn't do that.
Through my work I deal with grocery software and I can tell you that grocery software is ages behind the times. For most small retailers (small being a business owner with less than 10 stores in their retail chain, mostly local grocers) you are dealing with processes that would have been considered antique for the year 2000
No one at Danfoss got alerts than sudently hundred of fridges entered defrost mode? Reminds me of those computer you see at stores running weird ms-dos software.
Electricity is expensive. Grocery stores work on extremely thin margins with stock that literally turns rotten. These are physical devices that need maintenance. Their failure is often catastrophic. Grocery store workers are not equipped to fix an HVAC system. Someone needs to monitor for preventative maintenance.
I can't understand the mindset that would treat this as a trivial problem. What's sad is your confidence in giving this situation a 5 second take and declaring the whole thing stupid. Yes, security was clearly an issue, but saying that monitoring of critical infrastructure is sad is bizarre.
Over the past few years it has fluctuated but not the same continued growth as before. If you don't have a Shodan account you can see a chart on twitter:
To be fair, their entire threat model was likely "who TF would want to break in to change the settings on a thermostat on a fridge at a grocery store".
A valid question which has yet to be answered (at least not publicly).
It's a fridge. In a grocery store. You just get an employee to adjust the thermostat dial. How would the hackers demand payment if all you need to do is turn the dial back to "frozen"???
Edit: Yes i know the commercial fridges do not have "dials" and it's more involved. Still, if you have physical access to the thing, there's nothing that can be done from the outside that you can't revert.
> Still, if you have physical access to the thing, there's nothing that can be done from the outside that you can't revert.
Sure, with time and expertise. How does the average employee adjust the virtual thermostat on fifty network-controlled fridges before the food goes bad?
List of legitimate reasons for a refrigerator, an oven, a stove, a washing or drying machine, a microwave, a coffee maker, a sink, a garbage disposal, a toilet, a shower or bathtub, or any other home appliance to be connected to the internet:
hard to say who’s to blame: stores, installers or the vendor. most of these dashboards sat online for months, only 195 of 1,331 had every fix, and 76% went offline within days of the attack (disconnecting was possible all along, it seems).
The original researcher published about this in August of this year [1], a year after reporting it, titling the report "Defrost the Food", which the attackers apparently took to be a good suggestion.
As the firmware is open for anyone to download [2], blurring the affected function seems more like an invitation to find out more. I know I was curious when the news about the fridges in France broke. The function's actually called "check_code_of_the_day", and this is the implementation:
[1] https://www.claroty.com/team82/research/freeze-the-controlle...[2] https://www.danfoss.com/en-us/service-and-support/downloads/...
With all the disruption from AI on our industry, I can’t help but feel a little jealous.
“Why would a bunch of equipment malfunction?”
“Because you plugged it into the internet, you dolt.”
so of course that creates/enables the problem and doesn't notify us.
deliciously ironic and rottingly sad.
this case was egregious - built-in backdoor pw - but that is downstream of the decisions to IoT them and to default them to listen on the network.
I can't understand the mindset that would treat this as a trivial problem. What's sad is your confidence in giving this situation a 5 second take and declaring the whole thing stupid. Yes, security was clearly an issue, but saying that monitoring of critical infrastructure is sad is bizarre.
https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=http.favicon.hash:-853...
Over the past few years it has fluctuated but not the same continued growth as before. If you don't have a Shodan account you can see a chart on twitter:
https://x.com/shodanhq/status/2110526116679021055
A valid question which has yet to be answered (at least not publicly).
Edit: Yes i know the commercial fridges do not have "dials" and it's more involved. Still, if you have physical access to the thing, there's nothing that can be done from the outside that you can't revert.
Sure, with time and expertise. How does the average employee adjust the virtual thermostat on fifty network-controlled fridges before the food goes bad?