Supermarket freezer cyber-attacks strike chains in nine European countries
Cyber-attacks on Monday hit supermarket refrigeration at chains in at least nine European countries — Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden — prompting EU officials to warn of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply. Freezer temperatures reportedly rose as high as 50°C (122°F), forcing retailers to discard food. No one has admitted responsibility. The incidents follow an attack three weeks earlier that disrupted as many as 700 French grocery stores, with food losses estimated at tens of millions of euros, and have sharpened concern that remotely monitored refrigeration and similar devices could be used in government-backed hybrid attacks.
EU food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption. Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier did not attribute blame but said the attacks showed how cyber incidents can disrupt essential services and affect daily life, adding that they were not isolated and that Europe needed to be collectively resilient. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government met intelligence chiefs and said the impact was currently very limited, with most of the food distribution chain using up-to-date security. Italy’s national cybersecurity agency reported at least four Co-op stores in Sicily and one business in Tuscany affected; Meloni’s office said those sites mostly still had obsolete systems, internet-exposed interfaces and inadequate authentication. Belgium was among the hardest hit, with dozens of stores reporting refrigeration failures and federal prosecutors opening an investigation. Delhaize manager Mathieu Tilman in Belgium described having to throw away large amounts of food as distressing.
In Ireland, Musgrave Group said 13 SuperValu stores were hit and that replenishment of chilled and frozen ranges was under way. A small number of Dutch corner shops were disrupted; last month Albert Heijn had taken services offline after a separate attack. Portugal’s Mosqueteiros group linked incidents at seven Intermarché stores to an attack that appeared to target an external provider managing refrigeration. Sweden’s ICA reported problems at a limited number of stores without confirming a cyber-attack; national agencies said they were monitoring. Finland’s Kesko found irregular temperatures in a few smaller stores and was investigating. Estonia’s public broadcaster ERR reported at least one supermarket where hackers raised refrigeration to 50°C. In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre warned retailers to update fridge-control software; its head, Richard Horne, said vulnerable technology had been exploited in a couple of British instances. The agency also said the country was likely to face an AI-powered cyber-attack on critical national infrastructure within two years.
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