There you have it! The supermarket fridge hacks are no longer a French problem. They're a Europea…
November 9, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 comments
Defense Cybersecurity
There you have it! The supermarket fridge hacks are no longer a French problem. They're a European one.
Full story, just the facts: https://lnkd.in/epsVr_yW
It started Oct. 12 in France. The retailers say 150 to 200 Intermarché stores and nearly 100 Coopérative U outlets were hit. Per NPR, stores in Sweden, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium followed in early November. Including IKEA.
The Guardian reports thermostats were remotely cranked up across seven countries. In some cases to 50°C. That's 122°F. In a freezer.
The EU called it "a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain."
And who did it? Nobody knows. No group has claimed it. No government has been named. No ransom was demanded, which makes sense, since the food is already spoiled by the time anyone notices.
Sophos told The Guardian the two most plausible scenarios are state signalling or a lone wolf. No malware was needed, so there's no weapon left at the scene. Rubber gloves on the switches.
A week ago I wrote about the Pentagon treating the August freezer failures at military commissaries as a suspected cyberattack. The UBH story notes attacks on U.S. military bases in August have also been reported, and a security-industry write-up lists Danfoss controllers among the equipment hit in France. Nobody has connected those dots officially. I'm just telling you they're on the same board.
Here's the worst part. This wasn't hard.
The software running commercial refrigeration is often connected to the internet and rarely updated, per Bitdefender. UK Cyber Defence found more than 800 refrigeration and building-control interfaces tied to British retailers reachable over the public internet, the BBC reported. In July, CISA saw malicious activity against more than 100 exposed U.S. water and wastewater systems.
Same story every time. Industrial controllers nobody patches, sitting on the open internet, sometimes with weak or default passwords.
Food. Water. Next, per former CISA official Josh Corman, maybe temperature-sensitive drugs and lab materials.
The fix isn't a new program. If you run a store, a warehouse, a cold chain, a plant: get those controllers off the public internet. Kill the default passwords. Know which vendor configured what. Today, not next quarter.
Time to wake up!
Full story, just the facts: https://lnkd.in/epsVr_yW
It started Oct. 12 in France. The retailers say 150 to 200 Intermarché stores and nearly 100 Coopérative U outlets were hit. Per NPR, stores in Sweden, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium followed in early November. Including IKEA.
The Guardian reports thermostats were remotely cranked up across seven countries. In some cases to 50°C. That's 122°F. In a freezer.
The EU called it "a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain."
And who did it? Nobody knows. No group has claimed it. No government has been named. No ransom was demanded, which makes sense, since the food is already spoiled by the time anyone notices.
Sophos told The Guardian the two most plausible scenarios are state signalling or a lone wolf. No malware was needed, so there's no weapon left at the scene. Rubber gloves on the switches.
A week ago I wrote about the Pentagon treating the August freezer failures at military commissaries as a suspected cyberattack. The UBH story notes attacks on U.S. military bases in August have also been reported, and a security-industry write-up lists Danfoss controllers among the equipment hit in France. Nobody has connected those dots officially. I'm just telling you they're on the same board.
Here's the worst part. This wasn't hard.
The software running commercial refrigeration is often connected to the internet and rarely updated, per Bitdefender. UK Cyber Defence found more than 800 refrigeration and building-control interfaces tied to British retailers reachable over the public internet, the BBC reported. In July, CISA saw malicious activity against more than 100 exposed U.S. water and wastewater systems.
Same story every time. Industrial controllers nobody patches, sitting on the open internet, sometimes with weak or default passwords.
Food. Water. Next, per former CISA official Josh Corman, maybe temperature-sensitive drugs and lab materials.
The fix isn't a new program. If you run a store, a warehouse, a cold chain, a plant: get those controllers off the public internet. Kill the default passwords. Know which vendor configured what. Today, not next quarter.
Time to wake up!