Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers in hundreds of French supermarkets by up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), causing fires and spoiling food.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Monday that a “large-scale” attack had “affected connected refrigerators in several large food stores across France”, leading to food losses and fires.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has instructed the National Computer Security Agency (ANSSI) to investigate, a person in his office said.
France is coordinating with its European counterparts because other countries could also be affected, the person said, adding that authorities were assessing whether other French companies were at risk.
Felix Aime, senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at Sekoia Threat Detection and Research, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium had also been affected.
Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets had been affected, while Monoprix, which operates around 490 stores in France, said 5 percent of its stores had been affected.
Les Mousquetaires, owner of retailer Intermarché, said refrigerators in around 150 of its stores were heated to 50C for six hours overnight. A spokesperson said all affected food had been thrown out to eliminate health risks.
Geert de Clercq, a Paris resident, saw staff at an Intermarché in central Paris throwing trolleys of thawed frozen food into a giant trash can, with melted ice spilling out of broken bins onto the street.
Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket group had also been targeted.
“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and the food supply of the French is extremely serious and is unprecedented,” he writes on X.
Food brands E.Leclerc and Auchan did not respond to requests for comment.
There is no immediate estimate of industry-wide losses, but Intermarché CEO Thierry Cotillard told BFM TV that the “unprecedented” attack would represent losses amounting to “tens of millions of euros nationally in a single day.”
Christel Delberghe, director general of European retail association Eurocommerce, said: “This incident highlights the importance of resilience throughout the supply chain. »
Supermarket cold aisles are typically run by control panels that manage an entire store’s refrigerators and freezers and are accessible via the Internet, allowing maintenance companies to adjust them from anywhere.
The source close to Lecornu indicated that ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software provided by the Danish company Danfoss.
Danfoss said it was “aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems”.
The affected units were “using outdated firmware,” Danfoss said, adding that it has “long advised its customers to keep supported systems up to date with the latest firmware and migrate existing systems to current generation solutions.”
On August 9, Cybersecurity company Claroty’s Team 82 published a study detailing vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller. According to the report, software updates released by Danfoss fixed issues that could have allowed attackers to bypass authentication controls and execute code on compromised devices.
The attacks resemble disruptions reported at a dozen U.S. military stations in late August that resulted in food losses after refrigerators were hit.
In a statement, the French retail association, the Fédération du Commerce et de la Distribution, called for “total transparency” from Danfoss over the incident. He said supermarkets aimed to protect consumers and return to normal operations as soon as possible. The FCD said some affected stores were already back in operation.
Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which operates the Netherlands’ largest supermarket chain Albert Heijn and has significant operations in the United States, said it was facing a “security issue” on its network and had taken several systems offline as a precaution.
A message on the retailer’s smartphone app said it was unable to deliver groceries due to a “cybersecurity incident.”
Online orders represent around 10 percent of Albert Heijn’s sales. Physical stores remained open, while Dutch news agency ANP reported that rival retailers had seen an increase in delivery orders.
Ahold Delhaize said there was no reason to see a link between the incidents in France and its supermarkets.
Ahold is the fourth largest grocery retailer in the United States. The websites of its Stop & Shop, Giant, Hannaford and Food Lion chains displayed notices stating “site temporarily unavailable.”
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