A coordinated cyberattack has targeted supermarket refrigeration systems across several European countries, forcing control units into defrost mode and causing widespread food spoilage.
Security agencies across multiple nations are investigating exposed control devices as engineers work to isolate vulnerable systems.
How did store refrigerators affect
According to the information, the unknown perpetrators managed to change the settings in the cooling systems, putting them in defrost mode. In some cases, the temperature inside the refrigerators even reached 50 degrees Celsius, resulting in the loss of huge quantities of products.
The attack affected 40 Delhaize stores in Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as supermarkets in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands and Estonia. Among the businesses targeted were Swedish chains ICA and COOP, 13 SuperValu stores in Ireland, as well as 17 businesses in the Netherlands, including butchers and small neighborhood shops.
The restoration effort and the investigations
Stefan Moelansch, CEO of Sabcobel, which manages Delhaize's refrigeration systems, confirmed that the refrigerators were the target of a cyberattack. He explained that technicians had been working through the night to disconnect the systems from the network. He also said that addressing the problem required physical intervention in the machines, not just a software update, which delays the devices' shielding.
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Security agencies from Belgium, Sweden and Britain are working together to investigate the incident. The head of Sweden's cybersecurity center, John Billow, said that exposed control devices had been found.
For his part, researcher Kevin Beaumont argued that the perpetrators exploited the same problem that was used in the attack in France. As he noted, many of the cooling devices are old, no longer receive updates and were left connected to the internet without adequate protection.
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