Cyberattack heats French supermarket fridges, spoiling food

Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, causing fires and spoiling food. The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Monday that a “large-scale” attack was “affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France,” leading to food losses and fires.

Government Response and Investigation

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has instructed France’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) to investigate, a person in his office said. Lecornu is “personally monitoring the situation,” his office told POLITICO. France was coordinating with European counterparts because other countries could also be affected, the person said, adding that authorities were assessing whether other French companies were at risk.

The source close to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss. Danfoss said it was “aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems.” The affected units “were running outdated firmware,” Danfoss said, adding that it had “long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions.”

Impact on Retailers

Several major French retailers confirmed damage. Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were hit, while Monoprix, which operates about 490 stores in France, said 5% of its stores were affected. Les Mousquetaires, owner of retailer Intermarche, said fridges at around 150 of its stores were heated up to 50 C for six hours overnight. A spokesperson said all affected food had been discarded to eliminate health risks.

Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket group had also been targeted. “Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” he wrote on X. Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard told BFM TV the “unprecedented” attack would represent losses amounting to “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.”

International Concerns

Felix Aime, a senior cyberthreat intelligence analyst at Sekoia Threat Detection and Research, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium had also been affected. EU agriculture and food commissioner Christophe Hansen condemned the attack, also mentioning Leclerc, France’s largest supermarket chain, which has not yet publicly confirmed that it is affected.

Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which operates the Netherlands’ largest supermarket chain Albert Heijn and has major operations in the US, said it was dealing with a “security issue” on its network and had taken several systems offline as a precaution. Ahold Delhaize said there was no reason to see a link between the incidents in France and its supermarkets.

Why it matters

Supermarket cold aisles are typically run by control panels that manage an entire store’s fridges and freezers and can be accessed over the internet, which lets maintenance companies adjust them from anywhere. On Aug. 9, cybersecurity firm Claroty’s Team82 published research detailing vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller. According to the report, software updates issued by Danfoss addressed issues that could have allowed attackers to bypass authentication controls and execute code on compromised devices. Christel Delberghe, director general at European retail association Eurocommerce, said, “This incident underlines the importance of resilience across the entire supply chain.”

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Sources

• nypost.com: Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and spoiling food
• politico.eu: French supermarkets face food crisis after cyberattack hits refrigerators – POLITICO

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.