Grocery store chains in at least three European countries on Monday reported unexpected temperature rises in refrigerators and freezers that ruined food – the second time in less than a month. similar incidents have raised concerns about cyberattacks on increasingly interconnected infrastructures.
Dutch food retailers Ahold Delhaize and Belgium’s Colruyt both said an overnight computer incident caused the temperature of refrigerators and freezers in dozens of their stores in Belgium and Luxembourg to soar, while Swedish chains ICA and Coop reported similar spikes, with one media outlet explicitly blaming a cyberattack, according to the Reuters news agency.
The incidents come less than three weeks after several French supermarket chains said they were hit by a cyberattack that caused refrigerator temperatures to rise as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit at hundreds of outlets.
French chains E. Leclerc, Intermarché and Coopérative U told the AFP news agency last month that they had suffered a cyberattack.
On Monday, Reuters said that Ahold, the Dutch grocery chain, reported a cybersecurity incident to Dutch police in October after detecting suspicious activity in its infrastructure. The chain became aware on Monday that there were temperature increases in the cooling systems, Delhaize spokeswoman Sarah De Meester told Reuters.
The CEO of Belgian refrigeration company Sabcobel, which operates systems used by Delhaize and other chains, told Belgium’s national news agency Belga that a cyberattack was behind evaporators in refrigerators and freezers being put into defrost mode.
“We started mobilizing technicians from 1 a.m. to control the situation,” Stephan Moelans told Belga. “We worked all night and all morning to disconnect the affected units from the network.”
“Over the past few weeks, we have worked very hard to protect our customers’ refrigerators against this vulnerability,” he told the news agency, but added that many units would require physical modifications, and “that requires investment.”
Fredrik SANDBERG/TT PRESS AGENCY/AFP/Getty 
A handful of Swedish supermarkets also saw temperatures in their refrigerators and freezers soar early Monday, two chains said, forcing them to throw away spoiled food. ICA and Coop told AFP they had no immediate information about a cyberattack on their systems.
The ICA told AFP that “a limited number” of its stores were affected, but did not provide a figure. One of its stores, in Sjobo in southern Sweden, posted on Facebook that its refrigerators and freezers had “been hacked and set the temperature to 50 degrees” Celsius (around 122 degrees Fahrenheit).
“We are investigating what happened and the extent of it,” spokeswoman Helena Johansson told AFP, adding that the company was focusing on how to help affected stores.
Fredrik SANDBERG/TT PRESS AGENCY/AFP/Getty 
The Coop chain said six of its approximately 800 stores in Sweden had problems with their refrigerators and freezers and had to throw away food. Company spokesman Carlos Cancino told AFP that the units “either stopped working or were partially damaged.”
“I have not received any information that this is a cyberattack,” he said.
On October 12, major French retailers said hundreds of stores had been hit by a cyberattack on their refrigeration systems, forcing them to throw out food and raising concerns about food safety. In this incident, the refrigeration control systems of the Danish manufacturer Danfoss were targeted.
Stéphane Mahé/Reuters 
To date, no responsibility has been claimed for any hack targeting food retailers in Europe.
Speaking after French stores were forced to throw away thousands of kilos of wasted food last month due to the still-unattributed hack, EU Food and Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen said in an article on
“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and the food supply of the French is extremely serious and unprecedented,” wrote Dominique Schelcher, CEO of Cooperative U, on X last month.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed a cyberattack and said it also affected other major chains and started fires due to overheating of some equipment.
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