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I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

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Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the denominator? Every base has some kid of refrigerator, and there must be 100s-1000s of bases.

OTOH how many bases are effected and we didn't hear about it? Those 14 bases are only the ones we know about. Not just any failure, specifically heating the food (defrost) so it goes bad. Happening overnight, so it wouldn't be caught before it's too late. All that could still be a coincidence, but the more coincidences start to pile up the more we have to consider other possibilities too. I do agree it would be unusu…

Not just that, the position to stick a thermometer into the food before serving was axed as DEI, and the position to clean the food prep surface areas of the kitchen is too beneath the warrior ethos. Buying above single ply is too expense and it's too heavy, so have fun with the ED (dual meaning).

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#54
post #43

To summarize for people who TLDR: 14 freezers failed at the same time. They are all internet-controlled, and failed at the same time as a disclosure about a vulnerability . They all failed by turning on the defrost cycle and heating food. Regardless if this was a hack or a bug, the bigger lesson is that overcomplicated systems fail in catastrophic ways. Why do military commissaries need remote-controlled freezers? It…

These aren’t your typical refrigerator or freezer, these facilities have walk-ins or purpose built cold storage with multiple evaporators and condensing units. A building automation system is pretty standard for most buildings above a certain size, and monitoring and controlling the refrigeration is usually a part of it.

Unfortunately, I would wager that all BAS software is full of flaws and holes, allowing access to it for the public internet seems like a bad idea. I need to be on my company VPN to access our locally hosted BAS front end (which I have authorized access for) which seems like the bare minimum security.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I learned that commissaries (of which there are ~235 worldwide) aren’t actually independently operated by whatever military installation or base they happen to sit on. according to the article, the denominator is ~235.

If we limit ourselves to these, then that's a 0.5% known failure rate.

6%

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#56

"To be very clear: I do not have evidence that the Defense Commissary Agency was hacked." Should be much closer to the top of the article. Otherwise this is just weird and potentially dangerously wrong research.

Can you spell out the danger this blog post represents?

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH how many bases are effected and we didn't hear about it? Those 14 bases are only the ones we know about. Not just any failure, specifically heating the food (defrost) so it goes bad. Happening overnight, so it wouldn't be caught before it's too late. All that could still be a coincidence, but the more coincidences start to pile up the more we have to consider other possibilities too. I do agree it would be unusu…

And how many shipboard stores have been affected? Hardly something they’re going to talk about, and a far stronger candidate for attack. This could be spillover.

Oh that's interesting. what if the issues w/ toilet spillover were hacks? Hilarious.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#59
post #12

Very interesting article, very neurotically written. Definitely got grating by the end.

The bold text use make me think it was largely LLM-written. Maybe even LLM-researched.

I was getting hints of that as well.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#60

I'm waiting for the OpenAI report that their agents defrosted everything.

Oops, you're absolutely right to call me out for that. Starting the defrost cycle without emptying the freezer first COULD lead to spoilage. The load-bearing temperature is 0 degrees Celsius — above that point, and frozen food starts to go bad.
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