Fridge cyberattack hits supermarkets across Europe

BRUSSELS: Grocery stores from Sweden to Portugal were hit Monday (Nov 2) by a suspected cyberattack on their freezer systems, in what the EU denounced as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the bloc’s food chain.

Supermarkets in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were among at least eight countries affected in the incident, which came three weeks after a cyberattack caused mass disruption in French grocery stores.

Food retailers were forced to throw out produce that had spoiled or was at risk of spoiling after refrigerator temperatures soared overnight.

No one had yet claimed responsibility for Monday’s incidents, nor for the Oct 12 attack on major French retailers that likewise forced hundreds of stores to toss out food.

The EU’s food and agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said the bloc was taking the incidents “very seriously”, calling the repeated cyberattacks “deeply concerning”.

“They are a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it – a warning that we must take seriously,” Hansen said in a statement.

In Belgium, where dozens of stores across multiple grocery chains reported disruptions, federal prosecutors announced the opening of an investigation, without qualifying the incident as a cyberattack at this stage.

But several of the chains affected were unequivocal.

“It’s a cyberattack, there is no other reason,” said Mich Vergauwen, a spokesman for Carrefour Belgium which reported disruption in about 15 of its 700 stores. 

An Ikea Belgium spokeswoman likewise said its store in southwestern Mons was hit by a cyberattack, causing freezer temperatures to rise suddenly in the early hours of Monday.