Discussion
“Why are these systems even on a network? Just disconnect them!”
I see this after every OT attack, usually from smart IT people. As someone who responds to these incidents, I wish it were that easy. I wrote up how we got here, and why water utilities and refrigerators keep getting hit.
https://tisiphone.net/2026/11/08/lets-talk-about-why-all-this-ot-stuff-is-connected/
@hacks4pancakes I am reminded of a startup I worked for about 10 years ago to ensure cold chain. We cared about security. It made our devices more expensive. The customer did not care. It went out of business.
I hear you and I put mouse-over definitions on all the acronyms.
Yes guys, the answer is capitalism.
With a side of convenience and laziness capitalism.
But we're stuck with the problem.
@hacks4pancakes thank you so much for the detailed explanation!
It mirrors my expectation of anything embedded systems. But it also helps understand what factors brought us to where we're now. And yes, it does help answer the question my brain is shrieking of why anyone would connect fridges to the open internet ...
@hacks4pancakes I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about legislation to raise the base level of product security, like EU's CRA.
@hacks4pancakes I'm not sure we can just blame capitalism. Governments make the same short-sighted decisions for much the same reasons...
@hacks4pancakes Oof, I hope “OT” dies a fast death. It expands to something long-winded that seems to just imply “ops”. But then the expansion is also misleading because what you’re really trying to say is telemetry. I think enough people generally understand “telemetry”, so why not stick with that?
@hacks4pancakes I am guessing OT is not occupational therapy, in this context :)
@hacks4pancakes cool, thanks. It's a great article, this makes it more accessible.
@hacks4pancakes Thank you for this. As someone with years of experience in IT security and only the most minimal view of OT security, this is an enormously helpful article.
@hacks4pancakes It was a really good read, and I learned a lot. Thank you :)
@hacks4pancakes @mitexleo An excellent description of how over-optimisation (to maximise extractive value) leads to extreme fragility.
The cost of replacing mountains of stock will not be accounted for as a consequence of the poor decision-making.
@hacks4pancakes The answer to “why is XYZ a clusterfuck?” is always “because doing it properly would have cost money”.
@hacks4pancakes Honestly, I'm more enraged about the recent MS Paint issue with Paint being exploitable zero-click over network rather than OT connected to the Internet. Yes, the latter has terrible impact, but as you said... there are reasons (despite most of them not being purely technical but "just" monetary/staffing). Unlike with Paint.
@hacks4pancakes
"So clever engineers and businesspeople looked at the IT landscape and had an idea. Using Windows computers as human-machine interfaces, and commercial Ethernet to encapsulate serial traffic, would be much cheaper to buy, replace, and train technicians to support. "
And that's were the horror started. 😬
@hacks4pancakes this article reminds me of those HR emails that say a lot, too much jargon in fact, but they don't ever explain anything.
@hacks4pancakes
I'm a public sector water utility civil engineer and supervisor. I work closely with and rely on my colleagues who maintain our SCADA system (and they rely on me).
This article was useful. Thank you.
@hacks4pancakes This nicely explains why I have never wanted a smart home. What it doesn't quite explain is why somebody wanted a smart factory…
Cc @mvidner
@hacks4pancakes it's strange to see that even experienced people seem to assume that the fridges were directly connected to the Internet....
@hacks4pancakes I'm really trying to read your probably very insightful article, but it's full of unexplained acronyms I don't know. Would it be possible for you to spell out reach acronym the first time it's mentioned? 🙏🏻
@hacks4pancakes an analogy:
Why aren't the admin and monitoring parts of servers and datacenters not air-gapped? Just turn off all ssh access. If you need to monitor or admin your server do it locally from the server room. That would prevent a lot of attack vectors.
@hacks4pancakes thanks for sharing- valuable insights
@hacks4pancakes I’d be interested in where contractual responsibilities lie for these kind of security breaches.
@hacks4pancakes I have to ask, has food waste dropped in the countries where online fridges became the norm?
Because I suspect the answer is "No".
@hacks4pancakes folks never really think about OT
Okay, I read the whole thing and I still don't get what value adding remote (networked) defrost or other cycle settings adds to a refrigerator. Something more complex, okay maybe there's a value in setting a centralized command and control, but fridges were designed to compete with "put on or next a block of ice" and the obvious improvements since then are lighting and a temperature knob
@hacks4pancakes @rubenerd Abusing the people involved in working with this stuff obviously isn't helpful, but I read the post and I didn't see any *good* reasons. I see reasons the situation has become the way it is. But at every step, security has been disregarded. People have spent a long time fucking around, due to the interests of profit, and now they're finding out why all along security experts will have said this is a bad idea. That there are reasons doesn't mean they are good reasons that balance risk and benefit responsibly.
@hacks4pancakes It seems the situation won’t improve until the cost of NOT improving security outweighs the cost OF improving security. I’m not sure of the mechanism to get there, but I’d think it would start with insurance companies, audits, and board of directors being held responsible for catastrophic situations.
@hacks4pancakes Not just OT. AD DC backups on accessible storage (to DC) is a huge security screwup but no one is willing to entertain the question that if the person we trust to run the DC put it there, there's probably a good reason, probably something boring about mean time to recover being impossibly tight because you can't do a restore without a functional DC
@hacks4pancakes and it's for exactly this reason that "just" and "simply" have been removed from my technical vocabulary, because it's never simple, nor just.
@hacks4pancakes I only understand like 30% of the words of this blog posts but I think nowhere in there does it say why a supermarket fridge needs internet. Sooooo
@shellsort "Everyone Wants Access"
@blogwash @shellsort to be specific, food regulations (in multiple) require temperature be maintained at a specific level at all times. I mean, beyond just ... food safety.
Most people with no staff do that via mobile apps.
@hacks4pancakes @blogwash @shellsort If a fire breaks out in a building, an alarm goes off that can be heard for some distance away.
What about a local temperature alarm?
Is there really NO LOCAL STAFF?
@hacks4pancakes amazing explanation, thanks. I knew about the industrial side (my father was a safety lab leader and you couldn't alter *anything* in the factory without his signature and that signature didn't come easy), I didn't consider the same for refrigerators and it makes sense.
@hacks4pancakes Seems perfectly reasonable for a lot of if things to be on A network, or even a few networks. Fine to have them on multidrop RS485/Profibus connected to a bigger PLC connected to a DIN rail switch in a NEMA 4A cabinet, routed to a 40 year-old Arcnet hub mounted to the wall in the janitorial closet, connected to a pair of grubby beige 386s under a desk in the office. Would be nice if they didn't need to be on internet, though.
@hacks4pancakes
I mean, "why don't we just" is usually a flag that whatever follows will be months of diligent work, for the whole team, minimum, if it's possible at all
@sabik @hacks4pancakes It's hard to just when we already can't even.
@hacks4pancakes that's a really interesting insight into the industries. Going from bespoke systems that were inherently expensive to /capitalism/ will make this efficient as a root cause. Add in nearly zero emphasis on IT/security.
Early on in my career, I was told never to blame a person for something negative that happens, instead blame the process that gave rise to it. It seems like that can be applied here too.
@fullywoolly Capitalism is basically the root of all the problems, yes
@hacks4pancakes
A great summary of the journey. Understanding the whole problem is only way to develop appropriate solutions.