Cyberattack hits supermarket fridges in nine European countries

A suspected cyberattack hit the refrigeration systems of supermarkets in at least nine European countries on Monday, forcing some retailers to bin stock after overnight temperature rises, and drawing an EU warning that the food supply chain had come under deliberate attack.

Shops in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden reported cooling failures. The European Commissioner for Food and Agriculture, Christophe Hansen, said Brussels regarded the incidents as serious, describing them as "a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers' confidence in it."

Belgium saw the heaviest disruption, with dozens of outlets across several chains reporting faults and federal prosecutors launching an inquiry. Carrefour Belgium said roughly 15 of its 700 branches lost cooling; its spokesman, Mich Vergauwen, said there was no explanation for the fault other than a cyberattack. Ikea reported a similar failure at its Mons branch, while Delhaize, Colruyt and Intermarche also logged problems in Belgium, alongside four Delhaize branches across the border in Luxembourg.

Four Coop outlets in Sicily and one Tuscan business were hit in Italy, according to media accounts and the national cybersecurity agency; Giuseppe Spadaro of the Radenza Group, which runs Coop-branded stores there, told the news agency ANSA that the intrusion struck before dawn and targeted the remote-control system for frozen-food units, a fault since fixed. Rome's government convened ministers and intelligence chiefs for a cybersecurity meeting on Tuesday.

Six of Coop Sweden's roughly 800 branches lost cooling, spokesman Carlos Cancino said, adding that the stores involved ran on an older mobile connection rather than an upgraded one, which left them more exposed. Competitor Ica said a handful of its branches had similar trouble, with a spokesperson tracing the fault to an outside refrigeration-control supplier, the Danish firm Danfoss, whose equipment was also implicated in an earlier French breach. Portugal's Mosqueteiros group said seven of its Intermarche branches were hit by what looked like an attack on an outside service provider, Ireland's Musgrave reported a cyber incident at 13 Supervalu branches, and a handful of small Dutch shops also lost cooling.

In Estonia, intruders pushed refrigerator temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius at one shop running older Danfoss units, state broadcaster ERR said. Finland's Kesko group reported odd readings at a few smaller branches and had not ruled out network tampering, while a specialist at the country's Transport and Communications Agency said such attacks spreading beyond France had been only a matter of time.

Nobody has claimed responsibility either for Monday's disruption or for a cyberattack three weeks earlier that hit French supermarkets and left hundreds of branches throwing out spoiled goods.