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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

#171

Post by deathanatos »

Lt_Riza_Hawkeye wrote: post #90
HardwareLust wrote: post #63

My only question is, why would all refrigeration be under the remote control of DECA? That seems unnecessarily complicated.

The article posits that they may just have centralized monitoring, not control. Since this didn't affect every location, I would assume it was a shared default password or something

> The article posits that they may just have centralized monitoring, not control.

… the article does posit this … nonsensically. TFA also establishes that "RMCS" stands for "Remote monitoring and control system". I would think the "and control" portion of the acronym would indicate that it is centralized monitoring … and control.

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

#172

Post by ethbr1 »

nwallin wrote: post #125
nwatson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they airlift better supplies to a floating aircraft carrier somewhere in the northern Indian Ocean recently? No.

Aircraft carriers are not particularly well suited to be supplied by cargo aircraft. The largest cargo aircraft with the strengthened landing gear, arresting hook, and catapult attachment used to be the C-2 Greyhound. It had a range of approximately 1,500 miles with a 10,000 pound cargo. It was retired on July 28th, 2026. The C-2 has been replaced by the CMV-22B Osprey. It has a range of only 1,150 miles and a more l…

The relevant phrase is underway replenishment (aka UNREP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment

It's been the basis for at-sea supply of long-endurance ships since ~1910 when refueling oil became a key blue sea naval requirement.

Modern example: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/kzncvGBj-88

Mostly tensioned cables carrying hoses (liquids especially fuel being the highest volume / limiting factor), some palletized transfer over cables, and some helicopter lift (because the flight pads/decks are already sitting next to each other while everyone is waiting for fuel to finish).

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

#173

Post by namenotrequired »

TZubiri wrote: post #145
gavinsyancey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these materially different? A hack implies an adversary, and intentional targeting.

But is it materially different? Or is it a difference in quantitative increase of likelihood of the exploit? The thesis "everything hackable" will be hacked, and with the advent of hacking LLMs, the boundary between criminal hacking and civil hacking is being blurred, it's no longer attributable to a criminal intent, hacking commands are just something that happens through no criminal intent. Practically, the hackers…

Yes? “one of us made a mistake” vs “someone is attacking us” is a difference that people care about.

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

#175

Post by xaxbxcxdxe »

CobaltFire wrote: post #67

As someone who spent over 20 years active duty, and spent a ton of my career in the IT, security, etc. side of the house: Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. That said, the timing of the disclosure and the issue are rather concerning. Regarding the highest value targets to hit with an attack like this, you would want to target Guam, Hawai'i, and other isolated overs…

[dead]

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

#176

Post by waste_monk »

mnicky wrote: post #95
Hovertruck wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly I felt like it got more LLM-y the further I got in. Then I hit the part with: But the thing I can’t get past is Fort Huachuca’s failure mode. Not: the freezer compressor died. Not: the power went out. Not even: the refrigeration system stopped cooling. Every freezer went into active defrost.

Well, definitely some LLM use :) At least in the second half... Confirmed with Pangram detector as well, which has pretty good precision.

>Confirmed with Pangram detector as well, which has pretty good precision.

Please don't say confirmed. AI detectors are not reliable in any way.

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

#177

Post by addag »

Until recently, I would have Occam's razor'd this and thought of a misconfiguration error from the military.

Now, considering how the OpenAI/HF hack emerged out of nowhere, it might be possible that groups of AI agents might have done this even without any close human supervision.

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

#178

Post by addag »

CobaltFire wrote: post #67

As someone who spent over 20 years active duty, and spent a ton of my career in the IT, security, etc. side of the house: Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. That said, the timing of the disclosure and the issue are rather concerning. Regarding the highest value targets to hit with an attack like this, you would want to target Guam, Hawai'i, and other isolated overs…

In any cases, it is a strong evidence that the freezer can be remotely controlled globally, and this is in itself a source of concerns (what other electrical equipment can be controlled remotely, especially on such critical features?)

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

#179

Post by LtWorf »

vkou wrote: post #162
wongarsu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why resupply doesn't work as well as in peace time But at the same time, it's not like that came out of nowhere. If you attack a country, that country shooting back at any military installations in missile range has to be one of the expected outcomes. Given the US had all the initiative in starting the conflict I would have hoped there was a logistics plan that involved not relying on those bases to con…

> If you attack a country, that country shooting back at any military installations in missile range has to be one of the expected outcomes. Americans make war on other people, other people don't make war on Americans. It's one of the reasons why they are so eager to do so. 'The other guys might hit back' doesn't even register in the cultural psyche.

They hit back on 9/11 and it caused a panic that is still ongoing.

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

#180

Post by jesse_dot_id »

meliz242 wrote: post #92

Howdy y’all, author here. Just discovered this thread after wondering why Hacker News was a linked views source to my silly little freezergate braindump. Wanted to offer a few clarifications: I’m not a cybersecurity expert; I’m an investigator (in a totally different field), and this was essentially me following a weird thought to see where it went. My background is in natsec so that’s where my mind goes. There have…

Impressive article. I read most of it without skimming and that is high praise from this AuDHD nerd.

It's definitely suspicious. My money is on inside job — perhaps someone not fond of the current administration's handling of things. In my experience, these types of vulnerabilities are well-known and kept in the back pocket of engineers that have a lot of experience maintaining the equipment. Everywhere I've worked has been deeply vulnerable in some way, all of the engineers knew it, and often joked about it or were counting the days to getting pwned because companies never like to spend money to address the issue. I'm sure the military is no different. Probably worse.

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