European supermarket chains report hacked freezers reaching 50C

Major supermarket chains across Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Estonia reported that their refrigeration systems were remotely altered on Sunday. Local reports indicate that unauthorized users gained access to cooling units, causing temperatures to spike in affected stores.

Ica Kvantum, a Swedish grocery chain, announced via its Facebook page that its fridges and freezers were hacked overnight. The store stated that temperatures were remotely raised to 50 degrees Celsius, which is 122 degrees Fahrenheit. This specific incident highlights the immediate operational impact on retail inventory.

Coop, another Swedish retailer, confirmed the breach in a statement to Business Insider. A spokesperson said that “unauthorized actors were able to access and tamper with the cooling systems at a small fraction of our stores.” The company noted that only a limited number of its locations were involved in the disruption.

Ahold Delhaize, a Dutch-based retailer with a large presence in Benelux, attributed the issue to an “IT incident.” The company said this technical failure adjusted the temperature of refrigeration units in dozens of supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg. The full scale of the incident for Ahold Delhaize has yet to be confirmed.

Modern supermarket cooling units are often connected to the internet to support remote maintenance and system failure alerts. This connectivity appears to be a vector for these recent cyberattacks. The latest wave of breaches follows a suspected cyberattack on hundreds of French supermarket refrigerators last month, which caused food spoilage estimated in the millions of euros.

These events follow a series of similar incidents in the United States, where military base freezers malfunctioned in what was suspected to be a cyberattack. The pattern of remote temperature adjustments raises questions about the security of connected food supply infrastructure across the continent.