ColdWatch exposure census
Standing lower-bound census · snapshot 2026-11-05

Refrigeration controllers answering the open internet.

A passive, aggregate census of cold-chain and building controllers — Danfoss, Dixell, Carel and RDM — that respond on a public IP address across sixteen European national markets. It counts reachable devices. It does not test, touch or log in to any of them.

At least 4,853
▲ a floor — the real number is higher

distinct public IP addresses running a refrigeration or cold-chain controller that is potentially exposed to the open internet. This is a floor, not a total.

16
National markets
18,664
Matched records
4
Controller makers
28
Country × maker cells
3,077 4,853 +1,776 hosts 3 Nov 2026 5 Nov 2026 7 markets 16 markets
+57.7% more distinct hosts between the two surveyed snapshots, as coverage widened from 7 national markets to 16. The line climbs because the survey got wider, not because exposure appeared overnight.
Where the exposure sits

Exposure by national market

Each country is shaded by the number of exposed hosts the census found there, and ringed by a marker sized on the same scale. Click a country to pin its figures.

Denmark — 67 exposed hosts Ireland — 55 exposed hosts Austria — 72 exposed hosts Finland — 44 exposed hosts France — 1,691 exposed hosts Germany — 253 exposed hosts Italy — 688 exposed hosts Belgium — 456 exposed hosts Netherlands — 314 exposed hosts Norway — 25 exposed hosts Poland — 262 exposed hosts Portugal — 118 exposed hosts Spain — 332 exposed hosts Sweden — 131 exposed hosts Switzerland — 43 exposed hosts United Kingdom — 302 exposed hosts France — 1,691 exposed hosts Italy — 688 exposed hosts Belgium — 456 exposed hosts Spain — 332 exposed hosts Netherlands — 314 exposed hosts United Kingdom — 302 exposed hosts Poland — 262 exposed hosts Germany — 253 exposed hosts Sweden — 131 exposed hosts Portugal — 118 exposed hosts Austria — 72 exposed hosts Denmark — 67 exposed hosts Ireland — 55 exposed hosts Finland — 44 exposed hosts Switzerland — 43 exposed hosts Norway — 25 exposed hosts
Hosts per market 251,691
Marker scale
All 16 national marketscensus total
Exposed hosts4,853 Markets surveyed16 Largest market1,691
France alone accounts for 1,691 of these hosts, roughly a third of every controller counted. Pick a country to break the floor down.
Click a country or a row to pin it↑↓ step through marketsEsc clear
Ranked by exposed hosts
FRFrance1,69134.8%
ITItaly68814.2%
BEBelgium4569.4%
ESSpain3326.8%
NLNetherlands3146.5%
GBUnited Kingdom3026.2%
PLPoland2625.4%
DEGermany2535.2%
SESweden1312.7%
PTPortugal1182.4%
ATAustria721.5%
DKDenmark671.4%
IEIreland551.1%
FIFinland440.9%
CHSwitzerland430.9%
NONorway250.5%
Shares are of the 4,853-host floor All 16 markets · 4,853

How to read the map. Every figure on this page is aggregated to a national market — a country total. A marker is not a pin on any individual host; it is the count for a whole country, placed near its centre only so the eye can find it. No addresses, hostnames, operators, certificate names or banners appear anywhere on this site. Countries with no marker are simply not yet surveyed, not clear.

What the floor is made of

The four controller families behind the count

Shares of the 4,853 distinct hosts. The four figures add up to more than the headline because a single host can answer with more than one maker's fingerprint.

Danfoss2,851
AK-SM 800A / AK-SC site managers58.7% of hosts
Public advisories: CISA ICSA-25-140-03 · Claroty Team82, Aug 2026
Dixell1,495
XWEB 300D–500D PRO / Copeland controllers30.8% of hosts
Public advisories: CISA ICSA-26-057-10 · CVE-2026-24663
Carel288
pCOWeb HVAC BACnet gateways5.9% of hosts
Public advisories: GHSA-wwr2-w2jp-vx63 · CVE-2022-37122
RDM228
Resource Data Management Intuitive controllers4.7% of hosts
Public advisories: CISA ICSA-16-140-01A · CVE-2016-4505
How the number is built

From raw matches to a defensible floor

18,664
Matched records

Passive fingerprint matches across 28 country × maker cells. The raw haystack, before any de-duplication.

13,811
Overlapping records removed

The same host counted more than once — a second port, a second maker fingerprint, a repeat survey. Collapsed to one host.

4,853
Distinct public IP addresses

What remains after de-duplication: the unique hosts that make up the headline floor.

16
National markets surveyed

Sixteen European countries are covered. The rest of the continent is not yet surveyed — absence here means unmeasured, never safe.

20 / 28
Retrieval-limited cells

In 20 of the 28 cells the query hit a result ceiling, so the true count is higher than shown. Every figure is a lower bound.

0
Host details published

Aggregate country and maker totals only. Per-host data is held privately so it can reach the national CERTs and the makers who can act on it.

Why this is a floor, not a count

Three things push the real number above 4,853. Coverage stops at sixteen national markets, so every unsurveyed country adds hosts this census never saw. In most cells the data source capped how many results it would return, truncating the count before it finished. And passive fingerprinting only recognises devices that answer in a way we already have a signature for — anything behind a reverse proxy, on a non-standard port, or newly modelled slips past.

So read 4,853 as the smallest number consistent with the evidence. The honest statement is "at least this many," and the trend — up 57.7% as soon as we widened coverage — is what you would expect from a floor that moves whenever we look harder.

Primary incident & remediation sources

Where this matters, and where to fix it