PARIS: Hundreds of supermarkets in France have been hit by cyberattacks that disabled refrigeration systems and forced stores to throw out damaged food, following warnings that hackers are seeking to cause physical damage.
Around 150 Intermarché stores were hit, a spokesman for owner Groupement Mousquetaires told Bloomberg.
Hackers accessed cooling systems and set them to defrost, with refrigerators and freezers heating to 50°C for around six hours. Meat, frozen items and vegetables had to be tossed out.
Mousquetaires said the systems were managed by Danish refrigeration firm Danfoss and that it would be up to the supplier to file a complaint with authorities.
Cooperative U was also hit by the cyberattacks, chief executive officer Dominique Schelcher said on X.
Fewer than a hundred of its stores were affected, Agence France-Presse reported.
A spokesperson for Carrefour said 80 supermarkets were impacted out of a total of 6,000 sites. Some Leclerc stores were also targeted, BFM said.
Leclerc didn’t immediately respond to a Bloomberg request for comment.
Danfoss said it was “aware of incidents in France” and working with customers to implement mitigation measures.
It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the refrigeration cyberattacks, but the intrusions occurred against a backdrop of disruptive cyberattacks internationally.
In August, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre warned that hackers were increasingly seeking to cause physical disruption with their attacks, which it linked in part to increased geopolitical instability.
The centre said that such attacks were targeting multiple sectors globally and had been carried out by a range of threat actors.
Hackers are more frequently associated with stealing data and extorting companies.
But they can also target what are known as operational technology systems, such as machinery or temperature controls in refrigeration systems. — Bloomberg
