Second cyberattack heats EU supermarket freezers to 50°C, destroying food

A second cyberattack in a matter of weeks has disrupted supermarket refrigeration across Europe, following an earlier incident in France. Hackers reportedly remotely activated built-in defrost modes and raised freezer temperatures to 50°C, spoiling food stocks. In Belgium, the attack began around midnight Sunday; refrigeration company Sabcobel estimated at least 20 units were affected, including at Delhaize, Carrefour and Spar stores. Similar disruptions hit ICA and Coop supermarkets in Sweden, where employees were seen discarding carts of goods. Reports later extended the affected countries to Ireland, Estonia and the Netherlands. The Belgian refrigeration company said that repairing the weakness requires physical changes to equipment, while moving units to a more secure internet connection is an interim measure. Many customers had already taken that step after the French attack.

The repeated incidents expose the risks of connecting essential equipment to networks that allow remote control: an intrusion can cause physical damage and large-scale food loss, not just steal data. The attacks appear to use the same method, suggesting that earlier precautions did not eliminate the vulnerability. The disruptions also raise questions about how refrigeration systems should be secured, including whether remote access should be restricted and whether connectivity should be limited to monitoring. The wider concern is that cyberattacks increasingly affect physical infrastructure. The account links this trend to the growing use of AI in cybercrime, citing a separate South Korean case in which a suspected AI-assisted hacker stole data from 25,000 bank customers.