Millions of euros’ worth of food has gone bad after hackers turned up the temperatures of supermarket fridges to as high as 50°C in France.
Cyber criminals pried open the freezers of Coopérative U, Intermarché, E.Leclerc, Monoprix and Carrefour from afar on Sunday night.
The hack impacted more than 100 Coopérative U supermarkets, 300 stores from Intermarché and its Netto brand and 80 Carrefour branches.
Units in the Intermarché supermarket in La Haye, Manche, reached highs of 80°C and began to smoke, it said on Facebook.
Many supermarket branches told shoppers on social media that staff clocking in for morning shifts weren’t able to save the frozen produce.
‘Like many other stores, we have unfortunately suffered a computer hack of our cold storage system,’ said Intermarché Haguenau.
‘The consequences are severe: we are deeply sorry to have to discard all our frozen products.’
‘A real heartbreak for our entire team, who work every day to offer you well-stocked shelves and quality products.’
The E.Leclerc store in Pierry, meanwhile, stressed that other groceries – like fresh fruit and vegetables – were unaffected by the hack.
Photographs throughout the day showed empty frozen food aisles or freezers still out of commission this evening.
News outlet ICI published a photo showing a pile of melting ice cream, mini-pizzas and bags of broccoli at a Super U in Morcenx-la-Nouvelle.
A freezer in an ice cream aisle displayed a temperature of 26.5°C, a photo published by French news channel BMTV showed.
Two supermarkets in the Alsace region alone reported losses of £228,000 between them, the French broadcaster said.
The cyberattack targeted software made by Danish industrial technology company Danfoss that manages cooling equipment inside supermarkets.
It includes an option to defrost freezers and chilled food displays over a two-hour cycle, usually overnight.
But hackers hijacked an older version of the software, forcing units into a continuous defrost cycle for as long as six hours.
Danfoss, the Danish refrigeration company behind the software, said the units were older models that could not be updated.
ANSSI, France’s cyber security agency, has identified a hole in the older versions of Danfoss control software.
The chief executive of Coopérative U, Dominique Schelcher, confirmed the cyber attack on X.
‘Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented. It is unacceptable,’ he said.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into what it said was a ‘large-scale cyber-attack affecting the refrigerators of several major food retail chains across France’.
European food commissioner Christophe Hansen said on X that he ‘strongly condemns’ the attack on French food products.
‘Food security requires more attention at all levels,’ he said, ‘because the weaponisation of food has become a reality.’
Coopérative U, Groupement Mousquetaires, which owns Intermarché and Netto, E.Leclerc, Monoprix, Carrefour and Danfoss have been approached for comment.
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