What happened
Supermarkets in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Estonia reported problems with their refrigerators and freezers on Monday, in what appear to be a new series of cyberattacks, according to NBC News. Temperatures inside cooling units rose sharply, and food spoiled at some locations.
The reports follow an attack in France last month. Police there said hackers took over the cooling equipment of hundreds of supermarkets, driving temperatures up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit and triggering fires as well as significant losses of stock.
Authorities have not said who may be behind the latest incidents, and NBC News reported that no one has stepped forward to claim them. The European Commission said the episode shows how digital threats can reach into citizens' daily lives.
How retailers and suppliers responded
Ahold Delhaize, which operates supermarkets in the Netherlands, told NBC News it knew of an "IT incident" involving refrigeration at a number of its stores. The company said in an email: "Our teams are working hard to fully assess the situation."
In Belgium, Stephan Moelans, chief executive of the refrigeration firm Sabcobel, which runs Delhaize's systems, told the Belga news agency the event was a cyberattack. He said the evaporators in the units had been switched into defrost mode.
A Colruyt Group spokesperson said five Spar shops, which the company operates under a franchise arrangement in Belgium, had their cooling systems targeted. Carrefour's Belgian arm said the attack, which it said was aimed only at refrigeration installations, had an "extremely limited impact." It said 15 of its more than 700 stores were affected.
Sweden, Ireland and Estonia
Swedish grocer ICA told NBC News its own systems were not compromised. It said it had been told of a problem at a small number of stores that rely on an outside supplier and connect outside the company's central network. ICA said it was assisting those stores.
The ICA Kvantum store in Sjöbo, in southern Sweden, wrote on Facebook that its fridges and freezers had been hacked and set to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and that staff were discarding the affected goods. The retail group Coop told the Swedish daily Aftonbladet that six of its stores had experienced similar incidents.
In Ireland, the wholesaler Musgrave said a cyber incident hit refrigeration at 13 of its SuperValu stores, and some chilled and frozen items were pulled from sale. The company said its monitoring systems flagged the problem and it acted right away, adding: "Our investigation is ongoing."
In Estonia, public broadcaster ERR reported that a company making the affected technology said one of its customers was attacked. Intruders reached a computer that controls refrigeration and raised the temperature to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
Security concerns behind the attacks
Sweden's national cybersecurity center is handling several incidents involving grocery stores around the country, its head, John Billow, said. He said the center could not speculate about who was responsible.
Billow said the center had recently found "quite a lot of exposed operational technology devices in Sweden" that it has urged owners to update or patch.
NBC News noted that a growing range of equipment, from refrigerators and heating systems to security cameras and alarm networks, can now be monitored and controlled remotely, which gives cybercriminals more openings. The incidents also come as Europe deals with wider security worries tied to Russia's war in Ukraine, though authorities have not linked the attacks to any party.
