Think Twice Before Buying a Smart Fridge

Considering buying a smart fridge? What happened in France a couple of days ago will hopefully make you rethink your decision.

During the night between Sunday and Monday, hundreds of fridges in French supermarkets were hacked. Their temperature started rising up to 50º celsius. Tons of fresh and frozen products were lost.

This affected several companies (Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarché, Coopérative U, Leclerc), which all use the same software called Danfoss to control their refrigeration systems.

Here are a few important lessons that we can get from this incident:

1) The more digitally connected a process is, the more efficient it might become, but also the more VULNERABLE – a key principle behind the OFF Manifesto.

2) It’s becoming easier and easier to carry out cyberattacks at scale. Hacking millions of machine that run the same software can be achieved by just hacking that one software.

3) This time, this principle applied to fridges, but the same could happen (or has already happened) to cars, power plants, hospitals, and of course, to humans themselves, whose cognitive autonomy is at stake.

4) Whether it’s large companies, governments, or smaller institutions, real protection from such hacks or from attacks perpetuated by autonomous AIs will require DISCONNECTING some key processes, even if it involves giving up some efficiency in the short term.

5) Before making your home “smart”, remember that it will also make it more vulnerable. Think of the costs and risks, not just the benefits.

And just don’t get a smart fridge.

Did you find this reflection interesting?

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