Perhaps Connecting Fridges to the Internet Was a Bad Idea

paulpauper 23 points 4 comments November 10, 2026
www.theatlantic.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (4 comments)

lakeviewterrace

This reads like tech commentary from someone's wine aunt. Next we'll explore why you should unplug newfangled toasters and electric tea kettles: the hidden dangers that will burn your house down. The specific reasons these fridges were remotely controlled has been detailed many times, including in lengthy HN comments.

fuzzfactor

Bless their hearts, they didn't know any better.

gridder

This is like saying that ‘making a door’ was a bad idea since the thieves got in from it. Maybe the problem was leaving it unlocked?

hn_throwaway_99

I think some of the comments here are just responding to the title without thinking a little more about what was needed and the consequences. There is certainly a good case to be made that remote access to refrigeration management tech is very useful. But putting a custom app up on the open Internet is just about the absolute worst way to do it - this was basically destined to happen. This was critical infrastructure, and at the very least critical infrastructure like this should be behind a VPN or equivalent security layer.

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