BRUSSELS (The Thursday Times) — Fridges and freezers overheated at dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries overnight in a suspected cyber-attack, forcing shops to throw away food weeks after hackers hit hundreds of stores in France the same way.
Delhaize said about 40 of its shops in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected by what it called a computer incident, and that it was investigating. Carrefour said 15 of its Belgian stores were hit, and Colruyt Group said five Spar shops had their fridge systems attacked. Thirteen SuperValu shops in Ireland were also reported to be affected, and shops were hit in the Netherlands and Finland too. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with international partners to understand the incident, though none had been reported in Britain.
In Sweden, the ICA and Coop chains reported the same problem at a limited number of stores. One ICA branch in Sjöbo said its refrigerators and freezers had been “hacked” overnight and set to 50 degrees Celsius. At another in Stockholm, the sales manager said the attack struck at 2am and was noticed at 5.30am.
The chief executive of Sabcobel, the Belgian refrigeration company that operates Delhaize’s systems, blamed a cyber-attack, saying the units’ evaporators had been switched to defrost mode. He said the company had been working to protect customers’ fridges since the French attack, but that the units needed physical modifications, not just software updates. A Delhaize branch in Hoeilaart said it had lost €100,000 worth of produce, not counting losses from closing the shop.
The head of Sweden’s national cybersecurity centre, John Billow, said it was working on several incidents at grocery stores. “We have in recent weeks… identified that we have quite a lot of exposed operational technology devices in Sweden that we have been clear about the necessity to update or patch,” he said.
A technology supplier in Estonia said a supermarket chain there, which it did not name, had also been hit, with temperatures set to 50 degrees.
In last month’s attack in France, police said hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets, raising temperatures as high as 50 degrees, spoiling food and causing fires at several stores. Nobody has claimed responsibility, and authorities have not said who was behind the attacks.
