Why did hacked smart fridges cost millions and start fires, and how do I secure my own smart appliances?

Investigators traced major losses and fires to connected fridges with default passwords and stale software — the same hygiene fixes protect every smart appliance you own.

Short answer: Investigators traced major losses and fires back to connected refrigerators with poor security — factory-default passwords, outdated software, and a place on the same Wi-Fi network as the family’s computers — and the protection for your own smart appliances is unglamorous hygiene: unique passwords, automatic updates, and a network of their own. A smart fridge is a small computer that happens to keep food cold, and it usually runs for a decade or more — far longer than its maker may bother patching it. Attackers who get in gain a permanent foothold inside your home network, from which they can probe laptops and phones that share the same Wi-Fi, recruit the device into botnets, or tamper with controls on appliances that heat, cool, and charge.

That is how a kitchen appliance becomes both a data problem and, in the cases Ars Technica reported on October 14, a physical one.1. Change every default password. If an appliance or its app still uses the password it shipped with, set a long, unique one today — defaults are published and tried first by attackers.2.

Turn on automatic updates. Enable auto-update for the appliance and its app, and install firmware updates when offered; stale software is where known holes live.3. Give IoT gear its own network.

Put smart appliances on your router’s guest or IoT network so a compromised fridge cannot reach your laptop’s shared files.4. Cut internet access that is not needed. If a device works fine locally, block it from the internet in your router settings — a gadget that cannot phone out cannot be recruited.5.

Check the support end date before you buy. Prefer makers who state how many years of security updates a model gets, and replace appliances that have stopped receiving them.Pro tip: the common mistake is setting an appliance up in the maker’s app and never opening that app again. Update notices, recall alerts, and security fixes all arrive there — check in a few times a year.