Hackers heat French supermarket fridges to 50°C, trigger fires and spoil food

A major cyberattack targeting supermarket refrigeration systems across France has forced temperatures in fridges and freezers to rise to 50 degrees Celsius, causing fires and widespread food losses at hundreds of stores. Authorities have launched an investigation and are coordinating with European counterparts amid concerns that the attack may have affected other countries.

The Paris prosecutor's office described the incident as a "large-scale" attack affecting connected refrigerators at several major food retailers across France. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has instructed France's Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) to investigate the incident, an official from his office said.

Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets had been affected, while Monoprix reported that 5 per cent of its stores were hit. Les Mousquetaires, the group that owns Intermarche, said refrigeration units at around 150 stores had been heated to 50 degrees Celsius for six hours overnight. All affected food was discarded to eliminate potential health risks.

Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher also confirmed that his supermarket group had been targeted, describing the attack as extremely serious and unprecedented because it targeted equipment essential to preserving fresh food and maintaining the country's food supply.

The damage was visible at an Intermarche store in central Paris, where staff were seen throwing cartloads of defrosted frozen food into a large waste container. Melted ice cream spilled from broken tubs onto the street.

Felix Aime, a senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at Sekoia Threat Detection and Research, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium had also been affected. French authorities were coordinating with their European counterparts to assess the wider impact and determine whether other companies in France were vulnerable.

The scale of the financial losses across the retail industry remained unclear. European retail association Eurocommerce warned that the incident highlighted the need for greater resilience across supply chains, which play a crucial role in keeping essential goods available to consumers.

The cyberattack appears to have exploited vulnerabilities in connected refrigeration management systems. Supermarket cold aisles are generally controlled through panels that manage multiple fridges and freezers and can be accessed remotely over the internet by maintenance companies.

According to a source close to Lecornu, ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss. The company said it was aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems, adding that the affected units were running outdated firmware.

Danfoss said it had long advised customers to keep supported systems updated and migrate older systems to current-generation solutions.

The incident follows research published on August 9 by cybersecurity firm Claroty's Team82, which detailed vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller. According to the research, software updates released by Danfoss addressed flaws that could have allowed attackers to bypass authentication controls and execute code on compromised devices.

The attacks also resemble disruptions reported at around a dozen US military commissaries in late August, where refrigeration problems led to food losses.

Meanwhile, Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which operates the Netherlands' largest supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, and several major grocery chains in the US, said it was dealing with a security issue on its network. The company took several systems offline as a precaution.

Albert Heijn's smartphone app displayed a message saying grocery deliveries were unavailable because of a cybersecurity incident. Its physical stores remained open, while Dutch news agency ANP reported a surge in delivery orders at rival retailers.

Ahold Delhaize said there was no reason to link its network incident to the attacks in France. The company is also the parent of US chains Stop & Shop, Giant, Hannaford and Food Lion, whose websites displayed notices stating that they were temporarily down. It remained unclear whether other operations had been affected.

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