Cyberattack defrosts French supermarket freezers, spoiling food at 100s of stores

Major French supermarket chains on Monday said they were hit by a cyberattack that caused their refrigerators to shoot up in temperature in hundreds of stores, forcing spoiled food to be thrown away and raising concerns about food security.

The Paris prosecutor's office said on Monday that a "large-scale" attack was "affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France," leading to food losses and fires. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has instructed France's National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) to investigate, a person in his office said. 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.

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Top retailers E. Leclerc, Intermarche and Cooperative U confirmed to AFP they suffered a cyberattack that Cooperative U's chief executive described as "unprecedented". Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket group had also been targeted.

"Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented."

Dominique Schelcher, CEO, Cooperative U, via X

Schelcher wrote on X that the incident was unacceptable and confirmed that refrigeration systems had been affected since Sunday night. A source close to French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said ANSSI had already identified "a vulnerability in software supplied by a Danish company and has contacted the vendor". Antoine Hautin of cybersecurity consultancy Almond told AFP that industrial equipment such as refrigeration units, long isolated from the internet, are now connected via sensors or remote monitoring systems. By likely affecting hundreds of units simultaneously, the attack demonstrated "a certain level of sophistication," he added.

Danfoss told AFP in a statement that most of the affected equipment was "legacy" products which "no longer receive software or security updates". It said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected, with a version of the former using "outdated firmware". It added that it had long advised supermarkets to update from those models. Danfoss gave no figures of how many systems were affected.

The office of the Paris prosecutor confirmed to AFP that an investigation has been opened into "the large-scale cyberattack affecting the refrigerators of several major food retail chains across France". The probe will help "identify the victims and establish the link with the damage they reported in terms of foodstuff losses and the outbreak of fires", the prosecutor's office said. Intermarche condemned the food waste and financial losses resulting from the attack, without providing figures, while Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard told BFM TV the "unprecedented" attack would represent losses amounting to "tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day."

"Food security requires more attention at all levels," said the EU's food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen on X, condemning the attack and saying such "exploitation of food" was now a "reality". Christel Delberghe, director general at European retail association Eurocommerce, said, "This incident underlines the importance of resilience across the entire supply chain." Meanwhile, authorities are assessing whether other French companies are at risk and are coordinating with European counterparts as other countries may be affected.