Fresh and frozen food was ruined across hundreds of French supermarkets after a cyberattack remotely raised the temperature of refrigeration units, prompting retailers to discard stock and triggering new alarm over the vulnerability of food supplies.
E. Leclerc, Intermarche and Cooperative U confirmed to AFP that they had been targeted. Cooperative U chief executive Dominique Schelcher called the incident “unprecedented”.
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“Food security requires more attention at all levels,” Christophe Hansen, the EU’s Food and Agriculture Commissioner, wrote on X.
Hansen condemned the attack and warned that the “exploitation of food” had become a “reality”.
Paris prosecutors confirmed the attack and said it may also have affected other major retail chains, while fires were reported in connection with the incident.
BFM TV reported that hackers had “managed to remotely trigger the forced defrosting of the refrigeration systems in numerous stores”.
Danfoss said the affected equipment ‘no longer’ receives software or security updates
Intermarche told AFP that affected stores would need to “throw away all of the products” held in fresh and frozen sections.
French retail industry website jebosseengrandedistribution.fr reported that Carrefour Market and Monoprix had also been hit, although neither company had confirmed the claims.
E. Leclerc told AFP “that a cyberattack affected one of its refrigeration equipment suppliers”, causing “repercussions on the operation of refrigeration systems in several stores”.
A source familiar with the matter said the targeted systems were refrigeration controls made by Danish manufacturer Danfoss.
Danfoss said most of the equipment involved consisted of “legacy” products that “no longer receive software or security updates”.
The company said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 refrigeration regulator systems were among those affected. One version of the AK-SM800 was operating with “outdated firmware”, it added.
Danfoss said it had repeatedly advised supermarkets to replace or update the systems, but did not disclose how many units had been compromised.
A person close to French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the country’s cybersecurity agency had identified “a vulnerability in software supplied by a Danish company and has contacted the vendor”.
The agency was “liaising with its European counterparts, as other countries may be affected”, the source said. It was also working “to identify other French companies involved in order to alert them” and “prevent the spread”.
‘Large-scale cyberattack’
Cooperative U chief executive Dominique Schelcher said the attack had disrupted refrigeration systems since the previous night and described it as “unprecedented”.
“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is extremely serious and is unprecedented,” he wrote on X.
“It is unacceptable,” Schelcher added.
He said Cooperative U’s teams were “fully mobilised” and working to restore normal operations as quickly as possible.
“An investigation will be necessary to shed full light on this attack,” he said.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP that it had opened an investigation into “the large-scale cyberattack affecting the refrigerators of several major food retail chains across France”.
The inquiry will seek to “identify the victims and establish the link with the damage they reported in terms of foodstuff losses and the outbreak of fires”, prosecutors said.
Intermarche condemned the resulting food waste and financial damage but did not provide an estimate of the losses.
BFM TV reported that temperatures had been “altered remotely, resulting in the destruction of stocks of fresh and frozen products”.
The attack comes as European governments and businesses face mounting concern about the disruption that malicious cyber operations could cause across essential sectors.
French President Emmanuel Macron, a prominent supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion, ordered measures last month to protect the country’s critical infrastructure from Russian “hybrid attacks”.
Industrial systems such as refrigeration units were once largely isolated from the internet. They are now increasingly linked through sensors and remote-monitoring tools, Antoine Hautin of cybersecurity consultancy Almond told AFP.
The apparent simultaneous impact on hundreds of units suggested “a certain level of sophistication”, he said.
