Earlier this week, a mass hack of refrigeration systems at an estimated 700 supermarkets throughout France caused them to suddenly malfunction, causing spoilage of untold tons of perishables and, in some cases, fires. As is now the norm, basic cybersecurity would have prevented it.

French authorities say the systems, made up of entire fleets of refrigerators and freezers throughout a store, were hacked. More specifically, Internet-connected controllers that allow technicians to remotely administer the store-wide systems were compromised. The unknown attackers responsible then activated defrosters long enough for the fridges to reach temperatures as high as 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit). By the time the mass compromise was discovered, food was spoiled, and in some cases their electrical systems caught fire.

The hacks that didn't have to happen

Multiple security advisories and public research reports show that all three of the controller models reportedly hacked in the incident—sold by Danfoss of Denmark and Dixell and its parent company Copeland in the US—contained critical vulnerabilities that allow attackers to remotely log in to the devices with the same system rights as administrators. Until recently, Danfoss controllers, for instance, used a credential that changes each day. The password is generated by the publicly available firmware based on the date. A hacker who takes the time to analyze the code can do the same thing on any device that hasn’t received a recent update. Daily passwords are identical across models located in hundreds or thousands of stores.

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AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that’s capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet of Things devices and is more resistant to takedown.

By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices. An experiment the company performed recently revealed significant challenges in bringing such an AI malware replicator to fruition, so the finding is necessarily tempered. Still, the results raise concerns about the possibility of new forms of computer worms.

Challenging to shut down

Anthropic further warned not only about the new potential malware, but also that it could be difficult to stop. In its blog post, it wrote that “a replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there’s no centralized point to shut off—though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own.”

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Topgolf’s VMware costs were going to increase by 400 percent under Broadcom. To avoid that cost, the sports entertainment company moved 12,000 virtual machines (VMs) to VergeIO’s VergeOS and has saved over $11 million so far.

Before migrating, Topgolf’s VMware connection “ran very deep,” Scott Forehand, Topgolf’s global infrastructure manager, told Ars Technica.

Topgolf has over 100 locations worldwide featuring interactive golf games with real-time shot tracking and digital analytics. The company used vSphere and ESXi for decades and started using VxRail, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform that VMware co-engineered with Dell, in 2017. Topgolf employees previously participated in numerous VMware customer councils and have been interviewed for books on how Topgolf used vSphere and Horizon (now Omnissa Horizon), per Forehand, who is a leader of the Dallas/Ft. Worth VMware User Group.

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PC shipments saw a steep drop of about 20 percent in Q3 2026, analysts reported this week.

The industry saw its “sharpest decline since “Q1 2023," Omdia said in an announcement toady. Global shipments of laptops, desktops, and workstations fell 21.2 percent year over year (YoY) to 58.1 million devices, the analyst said.

Desktop PC shipments (including desktop workstations) decreased 23.5 percent to 11.7 million units, and laptop shipments (including laptop workstations) declined 20.6 percent to 46.4 million, per Omdia.

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Attackers hijacked three top-level domains and used their control to mint counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large organizations, Google said Tuesday.

The attackers launched a series of attacks on the .gh, .sl, and .as country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and then modified authoritative DNS records for selected domains within those namespaces. By controlling those DNS records, the attackers were able to pass automated domain control validation checks and obtain unauthorized certificates for “several Google domains” and “several leading global brands and widely used online services.” Google said it updated Chrome to block all certificates it identified as unauthorized, and worked with the issuing certification authorities to ensure the unauthorized certificates for Google properties were revoked.

Certificate issuance: The weak link in the chain

TLS certificates are the cryptographic credentials that underpin authentication and encryption protections for websites, mail servers, and other Internet infrastructure. These x.509 certificates use a digital signature to bind a domain name such as google.com to a public key. The public key is publicly available, while the private key is held only by the website operator. When a connection shows that the keys match, the visiting party knows it’s connected to the authentic site rather than an impostor. Possession of unauthorized certificates allows attackers to cryptographically impersonate the affected infrastructure.

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