Hackers Turned French Supermarket Freezers to 122 Degrees; Ahold Delhaize Took U.S. Systems Offline
About 700 French supermarkets were hit by a cyberattack that forced refrigeration units up to 50 degrees Celsius, spoiling food and starting fires, while Ahold Delhaize — owner of Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Giant — shut down systems after a separate security incident.
Cyberattacks have disrupted supermarket chains across Europe, overheating refrigeration systems at hundreds of stores in France and forcing grocery giant Ahold Delhaize to take systems offline in Europe and the United States, in incidents officials detailed on Tuesday.
French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told Parliament that about 700 of the country’s 10,000 supermarkets were affected. He said there was no risk to France’s food supplies, but said the attack “touches the heart of our food security.” “It was a wake-up call for everyone,” he said.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said its cybercrime unit was investigating the large-scale attack, which left spoiled food and reported fires in its wake. According to BFM-TV, hackers forced a continuous defrost cycle on store refrigeration systems and pushed temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
Hundreds of stores hit across chains
Groupement Mousquetaires, which operates more than 4,000 stores across Europe, said 300 of its Intermarché and Netto stores were hit, with some display cases still out of service Tuesday. Cooperative U chief executive Dominique Schelcher said 80 of the company’s 2,000 stores were affected and some had to discard food. Carrefour and Monoprix were also hit; Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were affected.
France’s cybersecurity agency said it was aware of compromises involving refrigeration remote-control modules made by Danish company Danfoss and U.S.-based Copeland. Danfoss said most of the affected systems were older products that no longer receive software or security updates. In an August report, U.S. cybersecurity firm Claroty had identified vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A and Copeland XWeb Pro platforms, noting that numerous controllers using the Danfoss system were directly accessible from the public internet, though both companies have since fixed the flaws.
Ahold Delhaize shuts systems in the U.S. and Europe
Separately, Ahold Delhaize said Tuesday it was restoring systems shut down after a “security issue” on its network. The company’s stores, including Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, Delhaize in Belgium and Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Giant in the United States, stayed open, but the brands’ websites remained offline Tuesday. The company said it had no evidence that customer or employee data was stolen. Albert Heijn said Wednesday it expected its distribution centers to be operating again during the day.
The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre said it saw no reason to believe the Dutch incident was linked to the attack in France. No group has claimed responsibility for the French attack, and officials have not named a suspect. Christopher Whyte, a homeland security professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said attacks of this kind are “not too difficult” to carry out, but called the scale of the French incident, and the absence of any ransom demand or data theft, unusual.
Reporting based on coverage by the Associated Press (via TechXplore) and Reuters.
