Supermarket Freezers Were Turned Up to 50 Degrees in a Suspected Cyber-Attack Across Europe, the BBC Reports

Dozens of supermarkets across Europe spent Monday throwing away chilled and frozen food after their refrigeration systems were targeted in a suspected cyber-attack, the BBC reported. Stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland were affected, with freezer temperatures in some stores pushed as high as 50 degrees Celsius — hot enough to ruin everything inside.

Belgium and Luxembourg took the heaviest hit, with about 40 Delhaize supermarkets reporting problems, alongside 15 Carrefour stores and five Spar stores in Belgium. In Sweden, the ICA and Coop chains reported a small number of affected stores — one ICA store in Sjobo said its settings were changed remotely to 50 degrees — and in Ireland 13 SuperValu stores were hit. A Delhaize branch in Hoeilaart, outside Brussels, estimated its food losses at more than 100,000 euros, before counting the cost of closing.

Belgian refrigeration company Sabcobel, which operates systems for Delhaize, said the affected units had their evaporators switched into defrost mode, which made them warm up, and its teams spent the night and morning disconnecting units from the network. National cyber-security agencies in Belgium and Sweden were monitoring the incident on Monday, and no one has been identified as responsible.

The attack follows a similar one in France in early October, when hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets and pushed temperatures from below freezing to well over 50 degrees, prompting an investigation by the Paris prosecutor's office. For Newark readers, the story is a reminder of how much of daily life — down to the freezer aisle — now runs on networked systems that can be reached, and harmed, from far away.