Europe on alert after supermarket freezers hit by cyber-attacks in 10 countries

A wave of cyber-attacks struck supermarket chains across at least 10 European countries on Monday, prompting European Union officials to warn of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain. Supermarkets in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany and Sweden reported problems, with refrigerators and freezers in some shops soaring to temperatures as high as 50C (122F). The rise in freezer temperatures forced retailers to discard food. No one has yet admitted carrying out the attacks. The incidents come three weeks after a cyber-attack disrupted as many as 700 French grocery stores, causing food losses estimated in the tens of millions of euros. The security of refrigeration systems and other remotely monitored devices has heightened concerns about government-backed hybrid attacks. The EU's food and agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption in the future. Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier stopped short of attributing blame but said the incidents showed once again how cyber-attacks can disrupt essential services and affect citizens' daily lives. "These are not isolated incidents and of course we have to be collectively resilient and prepared for such cyber incidents," he said. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni's government called a meeting with intelligence chiefs, though it said the impact was currently very limited and that most of the food distribution chain had up-to-date security systems. At least four Co-op supermarkets in Sicily and one business in Tuscany were affected, according to the national cybersecurity agency. Meloni's office said the affected businesses were mostly equipped with obsolete security systems, with interfaces directly exposed to the internet and inadequate authentication mechanisms. Belgian supermarkets were among the hardest hit, with dozens of stores reporting refrigeration failures, and federal prosecutors have opened an investigation. Mathieu Tilman, a manager at a Delhaize supermarket in Belgium, said he was shocked by the attack. "I don't even understand how anyone could do this... How can we end up throwing away so much food? I find it truly distressing," he said. In Ireland, 13 SuperValu stores were affected by what owner Musgrave Group described as a cyber-incident, with a spokesman saying replenishment of chilled and frozen ranges was well under way. A small number of corner shops in the Netherlands also suffered disruption, a month after Albert Heijn had to take several services offline in a separate cyber-attack. In Germany, refrigeration systems at the Rewe Büsken supermarket in the west were disrupted after a cyber-attack on system provider Danfoss, which said its systems were back in operation by Monday afternoon. In Portugal, the Mosqueteiros group said incidents at seven Intermarché stores appeared to have targeted an external service provider responsible for managing refrigeration systems. Swedish chain ICA said a limited number of stores had experienced refrigeration problems without confirming a cyber-attack, while national cyber-security agencies said they were monitoring the incident. In Finland, irregular temperatures were detected in a few smaller grocery stores belonging to the Kesko group, which said it was investigating. In Estonia, at least one supermarket was attacked by hackers who raised refrigeration temperatures to 50C, public broadcaster ERR reported. In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre has warned British retailers to update the software on fridge temperature controls, and has said the country is likely to suffer an AI-powered cyber-attack on critical national infrastructure within two years. NCSC head Richard Horne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there were a couple of instances in the UK where vulnerable technology had been exploited after the attacks. "It's not just supermarkets, it's through the whole food supply chain, and we've been working through the night alerting organisations where we can see they've got exposed technology that's vulnerable in this way," he said.