The Fragility of Digital Infrastructure

This insanity has got to stop. Cyber attacks disable. . .refrigerators? - by Josh Slocum

Making something digital, and exposing it to the internet is not always an improvement.

It’s happened again. Refrigerators in Europe went warm because of a software hack.

Think it through. Refrigerators are boxes with compressors that move gas around to remove heat. They have one function: make the box cold to keep food fresh.

They are not computers. They are mechanicals.

These were refrigerators in grocery stores.

If you run a chain of grocery stores, you do not need to digitally interconnect the refrigerators among that chain. You do not need a computer turn the refrigerators on or off. You do not need a computer to monitor them.

All you need are mechanical controls that already do the same job, plus actual human people on site (it’s a store, remember) who are capable of walking over to a dial and turning it. Capable of walking into a cooler and reading the numbers on the thermometer.

But it was possible to put the refrigerators online, so they did. Which made it possible for the online refrigerators to be hacked, which they were.

This caused some stupid grocery store chains in Europe to lose a bunch of stock, and so lose a bunch of money. But your water supply is probably already online. Hospital equipment, power plant cooling systems, etc. are all moving that way. Why? Because we can, and no one wants to stop and ask if we should.

Click thru for more details, and more thoughts on the subject.