Cybehacking Is a Dish Served Not So Cold

(Note the Classic Trek reference in the headline.)

Good morning! Today is Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. It's Election Day, so expect the cable networks to spend the next 14 hours telling you they can't tell you anything yet. And isn't that interesting? I can recall back in the '60s having vote counts in hand less than 48 hours after Election Day. These days they struggle not to double that time frame. 

My calendar says it's Election Day, Sandwich Day, Cliché Day, Housewife's Day, and World Jellyfish Day. Vote, grab a sandwich, and resist the urge to say "every vote counts" more than twice; at the end of the day, it is what it is.

Today in History:
1493: Christopher Columbus sights the island he names Dominica on his second voyage.
1534: England's Parliament passes the first Act of Supremacy, crowning Henry VIII head of the Church of England.
1718: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, enters the world, and two slices of bread eventually enter history in his name.
1783: Gen. George Washington's Continental Army disbands.
1838: The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, later The Times of India, publishes its first issue.
1868: Louisiana voters elect John Willis Menard, the first black man elected to Congress, though the House refuses to seat him.
1903: Panama declares independence from Colombia, with a helpful nudge from Teddy Roosevelt.
1911: Louis Chevrolet and William Durant launch the Chevrolet Motor Car Company.
1936: Franklin D. Roosevelt crushes Alf Landon, carrying every state but Maine and Vermont.
1948: The Chicago Tribune hits newsstands proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman." Whoops.
1954: Godzilla stomps into Japanese theaters.
1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, sending a dog named Laika into orbit.
1964: Lyndon B. Johnson routs Barry Goldwater, and D.C. residents cast presidential ballots for the first time.
1986: Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa breaks the story that blows open the Iran-Contra affair.
1992: Bill Clinton defeats George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot.

Birthdays Today include: Michael Dukakis, politician (former governor of Massachusetts, 1988 Democrat presidential nominee and Tank Driver); Lulu, singer ("To Sir with Love"); Anna Wintour, magazine editor (Vogue); Larry Holmes, boxer (former heavyweight champion); Roseanne Barr, comedian and actress (Roseanne); Dennis Miller, comedian and commentator (Saturday Night Live, Dennis Miller Live); Kate Capshaw, actress (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom); Adam Ant, singer ("Stand and Deliver," "Goody Two Shoes"); Kathy Kinney, actress (The Drew Carey Show); Phil Simms, football player and broadcaster (Super Bowl XXI MVP); Dolph Lundgren, actor (Rocky IV, Universal Soldier); Colin Kaepernick, football player (San Francisco 49ers); Kendall Jenner, model and reality TV personality (Keeping Up with the Kardashians). If today's your birthday too, have a great one, and maybe celebrate with a sandwich.

* * *

Back on Sept. 29, I wrote about the foibles involved with an internet-enabled refrigerator. I came down as solidly against it. As I said at the time:

That sounds kind of strange for me to say, I’m sure, since anyone who’s read this column for any length of time knows I run a highly connected house. Lights, music, flat screens, door locks, HVAC, and alarm systems are all tied to the net. I’ve spent the last year arranging this techno-monster, and I’ve written extensively about AI and how it should be handled.
All that said, my refrigerator isn’t on that list. First, because the place I bought came with a functional fridge, a few years old and showing no signs of imminent passage to that great kitchen in the sky. But even had I needed to buy one, I’d have made the conscious choice to avoid buying one that ties into my network and, ultimately, the internet.

Well, this morning I note a piece from Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection, giving another angle to that story.

It turns out that the next “Cold War” may come with melted ice cream rather than missile silos, as the Pentagon investigates suspected cyberattacks on military-base freezers and Europe faces more apparent refrigeration hacks.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my report last month on French supermarket chains hit by a cyberattack that caused refrigerators to overheat in hundreds of stores, forcing spoiled food to be thrown away and raising concerns about food security.
…
The next front in cyberwarfare may be hiding in the frozen-food aisle. The Pentagon is investigating suspected hacking after freezer malfunctions spoiled food at at least six military-base commissaries nationwide.
The Pentagon is treating the spate of mysterious freezer malfunctions that spoiled food at military bases across the United States in August as a suspected hack, according to four officials familiar ‌with the matter.

I’d love to claim I saw this coming because I’m some kind of oracle. I’m not. I just spent enough years as a network administrator to know a simple truth: every device you plug into a network is a door, and the only question is who holds the key. Somebody apparently found the key to the freezer.

Units at the affected commissaries malfunctioned by switching into heating or defrost modes. Somebody reached into a machine whose entire reason for existing is keeping things cold, and told it to cook. That isn’t a glitch. That’s a prank with a body count measured in pints of Rocky Road — and, potentially, a lot more. 

The roll call of affected bases reads like a map of the American military footprint: Fort Irwin and Travis Air Force Base in California, Fort Huachuca in Arizona, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, and Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. F.E. Warren, for the record, oversees a chunk of our ICBM force. So much for melted ice cream “rather than” missile silos. Turns out you can have both.

And the military isn’t treating this as a joke. A Cyber Command unit and several Defense law enforcement agencies have taken up the case, and one official told Reuters that military investigators have contacted their French counterparts about the supermarket attack there. 

Now look at France. That attack overrode temperature controls on commercial cooling units in more than 350 establishments, and supermarkets had to clear spoiled merchandise out of their frozen food aisles. Here’s the line that should keep you up tonight: experts told Reuters the French attack appeared easy to pull off. 

Easy. Not a nation-state masterpiece requiring a basement full of geniuses. Easy.

That tracks with everything I learned in IT. Appliance makers build appliances. They hire engineers who know compressors and refrigerant, then bolt on a Wi-Fi chip because the marketing department wants “smart” on the box. Security comes last, if it comes at all. Default passwords nobody changes. Cloud dashboards on servers nobody audits. Firmware nobody updates because the fridge works fine, so why bother?

This brings me back to my own house, and the question regular readers keep asking: How can a guy with networked door locks lecture anybody about a networked fridge?

Simple. It’s a risk-and-reward calculation, and the fridge flunks it. My locks, lights, and HVAC give me real control and real convenience, and I wall them off on my own network segment where I decide who talks to whom. A connected refrigerator offers… what, exactly? A camera so you can check whether you’re out of eggs while standing in Wegmans? A screen that shows the weather? I own a phone. It does that.

On the other side of the ledger, you’ve handed the one appliance responsible for keeping your family’s food safe to a manufacturer’s server farm — and to anyone who breaks into it. The downside isn’t a light that won’t turn on. It’s a week’s groceries, a freezer full of venison, or the medication some folks keep in that crisper drawer, all quietly warming to room temperature while you sleep.

Scale that up and apply it to a military installation and you see why the Pentagon cares. Napoleon supposedly said an army marches on its stomach. Somebody out there seems to have read the same quote and drawn a different conclusion. You don’t need to blow up a supply depot when you can tell its freezers to defrost from 5,000 miles away.

The commissaries and French supermarkets run commercial gear, not the Samsung in your kitchen. Fair enough. But the principle doesn’t care about the brand name. If it connects, it can be reached. If it can be reached, somebody will eventually reach it — and the folks doing the reaching just demonstrated they’ll go after food.

My refrigerator has one job and no IP address. Two months ago, I called that a preference. Today, I’d call it a security policy.

Thought for the Day: The smartest appliance in your kitchen is the one that can't take orders from strangers.

VIP members: I've become known around here for saying "your voice counts." Well, make sure of that, today of all days. VOTE.

Take care today, gang. I'll be adding my voice to the election night live blogging. Watch for a link off the main page. I'll see you right here tomorrow, as well. 

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