Cyberattack overheats fridges in hundreds of French supermarkets

Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers in hundreds of French supermarkets overnight from Sunday to Monday, spoiling stock and causing fires. The Paris prosecutor’s office described it as a “large-scale” attack on connected refrigeration systems at several major retailers, Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ordered ANSSI, France’s national cybersecurity agency, to investigate. France is coordinating with European partners.

…aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems

Danfoss, in a statement

Counts of affected stores differ. Les Mousquetaires, which owns Intermarché, told Reuters about 150 of its stores were hit, with temperatures held at 50C for six hours. AFP, cited by Al Jazeera, reported at least 300 Intermarché and Netto stores and more than 100 Coopérative U stores. Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were affected.

ANSSI identified a flaw in software from the Danish company Danfoss, which said the affected units were running outdated firmware. An analyst at the security firm Sekoia told Al Jazeera that stores in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium were also affected.

In August, the security firm Claroty published research on Danfoss vulnerabilities that could let attackers bypass authentication, Al Jazeera reported.