Supermarket cyberattacks hit fridges in 11 European countries; freezers pushed to 50°C

Hackers have switched off or overheated refrigeration in supermarkets in at least 11 European countries this week, spoiling large amounts of food, and the European Union says the attacks are "not isolated", Al Jazeera reported. No group has claimed responsibility and the motive is unknown.

Where the supermarket cyberattacks hit

• Monday: refrigeration failures were reported in at least nine EU countries, including Belgium (dozens of stores across several chains, now under investigation by federal prosecutors), Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
• Sweden: seven Coop stores were hit overnight, and at an ICA Kvantum store in Sjöbo the freezers reached 50°C. In Estonia, attackers raised freezer temperatures at a Selver supermarket to +50°C, ERR News reported.
• Italy: about 20 supermarkets were affected; the Coop group in Sicily said four of its 300 stores were hit, with damage in the thousands of euros. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's office called the impact "limited".
• Tuesday: Germany reported four supermarkets hit and Romania six. In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre said small meat-processing firms were targeted with minimal impact.

The wave mirrors a large attack on hundreds of French supermarkets in October.

How the attackers got in

The targets were the controllers that run fridges and freezers. Danfoss, the Danish maker of many of these controls, said its systems were among those targeted again, and advised that they should never be reachable directly from the internet. Coop Sweden said the affected units were connected through old 4G links, and it is speeding up a move to 5G and modern modems. Stores have reopened normally.

Romania's cyber security chief, Dan Cimpean, said the attack "seems semi-amateurish" and that he does not suspect a state. EU spokesperson Thomas Regnier said EU agencies are working with national authorities on a joint response. Richard Horne, head of the UK's NCSC, told the BBC the problem reaches across the whole food supply chain, and warned separately that the UK must expect AI-powered attacks on critical infrastructure, Reuters reported.

Why it matters here

The same kind of internet-connected controllers run cold stores, pharmacies and supermarket chains in Pakistan, and the lesson from Europe is simple: any control panel reachable from the open internet with a default password is a target. Businesses should check whether their refrigeration, solar inverters and CCTV recorders are exposed online, change factory passwords and put them behind a firewall or VPN. Cybercrime in Pakistan is reported to the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA).

Millions of Pakistanis live in the UK and Ireland, where the attacks have touched food suppliers; shoppers there have been told there is no cause for alarm.