Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and food losses

PARIS, Oct 12 : Hackers forced the temperature of many French supermarket fridges up to 50 degrees Celsius (122°F) overnight, sparking fires and food losses at several hundred stores across the country in a major cyberattack.

The Paris prosecutor's office said the "large-scale" attack was "affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France". It said reported damage included "food losses and fires".

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu instructed France's National Cybersecurity Agency ANSSI to investigate, a person in his office said.

They said France "was coordinating with its European counterparts, as other countries may also be affected," while also investigating whether any other French firms were at risk.

Les Mousquetaires, which owns retailer Intermarche, said around 150 of its stores had been hit, with fridges heated up to 50 degrees Celsius for six hours. It had thrown all the food away to avoid any sanitary risks, a spokesperson said.

And Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket had also been hit by the attack.

"Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented," he wrote on X.

Several other supermarket chains, including Carrefour, Monoprix, E.Leclerc and Auchan, did not respond to requests for comment.

DUTCH SECURITY ISSUE

Dutch supermarket company Ahold Delhaize said it was also dealing with a "security issue" in its network, and had taken several systems offline to protect them. 

Stores of its Albert Heijn chain, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands which also has several stores in Belgium, remained open in both countries.

But its online app and delivery system were down, while electronic price tags often displayed the wrong information. 

It was not clear if there was any link between the French supermarket attack and the problems flagged by Ahold Delhaize. 

Delhaize supermarkets, also part of Ahold Delhaize but operating in Belgium and Luxembourg, were also affected by the security issue, Belgian media reported. 

The source close to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss.

Danfoss said it was "aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems".

The affected units "were running outdated firmware", Danfoss said, adding that it had "long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions".