{"id":821758,"date":"2026-11-02T13:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T13:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821758\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T13:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T13:58:10","slug":"supermarket-freezers-across-europe-hit-by-second-suspected-cyber-attack-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821758\/","title":{"rendered":"Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack | Sweden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg<\/a> have said the temperatures of their refrigerators and freezers in dozens of stores rose overnight, prompting fears of a cyber-attack similar to one that caused millions of euros of food losses in France.<\/p>\n

Sweden\u2019s Coop chain told the daily Aftonbladet<\/a> on Monday that six of \u200bits stores \u200chad been \u200baffected, while ICA said it was \u201caware that a limited \u200bnumber of stores were affected by an incident overnight which impacted their refrigeration and freezer systems\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which last \u200bmonth \u200breported a \u200bcybersecurity \u200cincident \u200bto police in the Netherlands, said an \u201cIT incident\u201d \u200bhad hit fridges and \u2060freezers in dozens of its \u2060supermarkets in \u200bBelgium \u200cand \u200cLuxembourg.<\/p>\n

A company spokesperson, Sarah \u200cDe Meester, said the supermarket chain had established that temperatures in the cooling systems had increased, adding that the incident was being investigated.<\/p>\n

Belgium\u2019s Le Soir newspaper reported<\/a> that dozens of stores and supermarkets were affected, including five Spar outlets, multiple Shop & Go convenience stores attached to Q8 service stations, and a number of smaller Proxy Delhaize minimarkets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started mobilising technicians at 1am,\u201d Stephan Moelans, the chief executive of Sabcobel, which specialises in refrigeration system installations, told the paper. \u201cWe spent all night and morning disconnecting the affected installations from the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n

French \u2060police said in October that hackers had seized control of cooling units at \u2060up to 700 supermarkets<\/a> in a large-scale attack that led to heavy losses of chilled and frozen foods and underlined the vulnerability of internet-connected systems.<\/p>\n

Hackers had remotely overridden the settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets, pushing them from as low as -27C to well over 50C. The Intermarch\u00e9, Coop\u00e9rative U, Carrefour, Leclerc and Monoprix chains were among those affected.<\/p>\n

Stores had to discard vast quantities of fresh meat, dairy and frozen products, with many suffering losses ranging from tens of thousands of euros to more than \u20ac130,000 (\u00a3109,000). Two stores in Alsace reported a combined loss of \u20ac270,000.<\/p>\n

Most supermarket cold aisles are connected to the internet to allow remote maintenance and alerts for system failures. In the French attack, the hackers pirated controllers mostly supplied by the Danish company Danfoss.<\/p>\n

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They disabled alarm systems before adjusting the thermostats or extending the defrost programme by hours. Danfoss said it had identified security flaws last year and had \u201clong recommended\u201d customers install updates.<\/p>\n

The Paris prosecutor\u2019s office has opened a formal investigatiion into the French attack, saying damage included \u201cfood losses and fires\u201d, and the prime minister, S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, instructed France\u2019s national cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, to investigate.<\/p>\n

ANSSI subsequently confirmed <\/a>that supermarkets using controllers from two other companies were also targeted in the attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg have said the temperatures of their refrigerators and freezers in dozens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-821758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}