Cyberattack Pushes French Supermarket Fridges to 50°C, Sparking Fires and Food Losses

A cyberattack disrupted refrigeration systems at hundreds of supermarkets across France beginning Sunday night into Monday, pushing some units to temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, triggering fires and forcing retailers to discard spoiled stock, according to multiple news reports.

Groupement Les Mousquetaires, which operates the Intermarché and Netto chains, said at least 300 of its stores had refrigeration units affected for roughly six hours overnight, with all exposed food discarded as a precaution. Cooperative U reported more than 100 affected outlets, Carrefour said roughly 80 of its approximately 6,000 French stores were hit, and several E.Leclerc locations also reported disruption, according to a report from CBS News, which cited Agence France-Presse. Dutch-based Ahold Delhaize separately reported a security issue affecting its grocery-delivery app, though it was not confirmed to be linked to the same intrusion.

The Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation, describing the episode as a "large-scale" attack "affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France," according to the same report. A person close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the country's cybersecurity agency had traced the intrusion to a vulnerability in refrigeration-control software supplied by a Danish manufacturer and had contacted the vendor, which multiple outlets identified as Danfoss.

Danfoss, in a statement to AFP, said the affected equipment was largely legacy hardware that "no longer receive[s] software or security updates." The company's AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 controller lines, which manage refrigeration across large retail chains, were both named in reporting on the intrusion. Security researchers at Claroty's Team82 research unit had previously disclosed vulnerabilities in the same family of Danfoss supervisory controllers, warning that flaws in the widely deployed AK-SM 800A platform could let an attacker silently alter cooling settings across an entire store's refrigeration network while leaving displayed temperatures unchanged.

Cooperative U's chief executive, Dominique Schelcher, called the intrusion unprecedented in a post describing the attack as deliberately "targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products." European Union Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen weighed in as well, writing in a statement posted the same day that "food security requires more attention at all levels" across the bloc.

Cybersecurity consultant Antoine Hautin, of the firm Almond, told AFP the operation showed "a certain level of sophistication," while French broadcaster franceinfo reported that attackers appeared to have seized remote control of store thermostats rather than exploiting a more conventional data breach. ABC News Australia reported that the disruption may have extended beyond France, citing one analyst's assessment that similar systems were also affected in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium, though authorities in those countries had not confirmed the claim as of Tuesday.

No group had claimed responsibility as of Tuesday, and investigators had not publicly attributed the intrusion to any specific actor. The incident follows a directive issued by President Emmanuel Macron last month ordering new protections for critical infrastructure against what French officials have described as Russian-linked "hybrid attacks," though officials have not said whether Monday's intrusion is connected to that broader campaign. Retailers said they were working with cybersecurity authorities to patch the affected systems and assess the scale of financial losses, which industry figures said could run into the tens of millions of euros nationwide.