Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and spoiling food

Key Points:

• Hackers targeted connected refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets, raising temperatures up to 50°C and causing fires and extensive food spoilage, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
• Major retailers affected include Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarché, and Cooperative U, with losses estimated in the tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.
• The attack exploited vulnerabilities in refrigeration management systems supplied by Danish company Danfoss, specifically outdated firmware in their controllers, as identified by France’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI).
• Similar cyber disruptions have been reported in other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where retailer Ahold Delhaize faced a separate security issue impacting online grocery deliveries.
• Industry groups are calling for transparency and emphasizing the critical need for supply chain resilience, while affected stores are working to restore normal operations and discard compromised food products.