Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg have reported a massive refrigeration outage. On Monday night, dozens of stores experienced a sudden rise in temperature in their refrigerators and freezers. Experts suspect a new cyberattack similar to the one that recently caused millions in losses to retailers in France.
Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg have reported a massive refrigeration outage. On Monday night, dozens of stores experienced a sudden rise in temperature in their refrigerators and freezers. Experts suspect a new cyberattack similar to the one that recently caused millions in losses to retailers in France.
In Sweden, two major chains — Coop (at least six stores affected) and ICA — reported problems at once. At the same time, Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize confirmed an “IT incident” that affected equipment in dozens of supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg, including the Spar, Shop & Go and Proxy Delhaize chains, The Guardian writes .
“We started mobilizing technicians at 1 a.m. All night and into the morning, we disconnected the affected installations from the network,” said Stefan Moelans, head of Sabcobel, a company that services refrigeration systems.
The incident comes shortly after a major cyberattack in France in October, where attackers took control of system controllers in nearly 700 supermarkets (including Carrefour, Intermarché and Monoprix). The hackers then remotely changed the settings of thousands of freezers, raising the temperature from -27°C to over +50°C, and also disabled alarm systems.
The French incident forced stores to throw away tons of spoiled meat, dairy products, and convenience foods. Losses for individual outlets ranged from tens to hundreds of thousands of euros (in one region, two stores lost €270,000 worth of products), and in some cases, overheating led to fires.
Most modern commercial refrigerators are connected to the internet for remote monitoring and maintenance. According to an investigation in France, hackers have compromised controllers (including those from Danish company Danfoss) by exploiting software vulnerabilities that the manufacturer had previously warned about and urged to install security updates.
National cybersecurity agencies and law enforcement are currently investigating large-scale hacker attacks on Europe’s food infrastructure.
