The refrigeration dashboards that attackers abused at French supermarkets on the night of Oct. 11 had been sitting open on the internet for at least six months, according to an analysis of internet scans published by IPinfo on Monday.

In its Oct. 6-7 sweep, five days before the attack, IPinfo found 2,528 addresses showing a Danfoss StoreView dashboard, the web page stores and technicians use to watch and manage refrigeration controllers. France had 1,331 of them, more than the 1,197 found across the other 72 countries and territories combined. Poland was next with 179, followed by the U.S. with 101.

Most of the French systems were behind on security. IPinfo counted 85% running software with known flaws, including 527 older controllers Danfoss no longer supports, and only 195 had every available fix. France wasn't patching worse than anyone else, since the flawed share elsewhere was 84%.…