Refrigerators and freezers at dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack, forcing shops to throw away large amounts of food. Around 40 Delhaize stores in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, along with a smaller number of shops in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
Sabcobel, a Belgian company that makes some of the affected units, said their evaporators had been switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up. The method is believed to match last month's attack on hundreds of French supermarkets, when millions of euros' worth of food was discarded. Freezer temperatures in some shops reportedly rose as high as 50C.
Sabcobel's chief executive, Stephan Moelans, said staff had worked through the night to disconnect affected units from the network. He said the company had been working to close the vulnerability since the French incident, but that the units needed physical modifications rather than just software updates, and that the simplest fix was to manage fridges over a secure internet connection. Most European supermarket systems are connected online so they can be maintained remotely.
National cyber-security agencies in Belgium and Sweden said they were monitoring the incident, and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with partners to understand it, though no UK cases have been reported. One Belgian store manager said his branch alone had lost €100,000 of produce. In the US, authorities investigating refrigeration failures at several military bases in August are working with French officials to see whether the incidents are linked.