Supermarket Freezers Hacked in Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden, Temperatures Set to 50 Degrees

Supermarket freezers and fridges were hacked overnight in Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden.

Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt said on Monday that an IT incident overnight hit fridges and freezers in dozens of stores in Belgium and Luxembourg. Swedish grocers ICA and Coop reported similar temperature spikes, and one Swedish store blamed a cyberattack, Reuters reported.

Belgium stores lose food

Delhaize realised on Monday that temperatures had risen in its cooling systems, spokesperson Sarah De Meester said. The company is investigating.

Stephan Moelans, chief executive of Belgian refrigeration company Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize systems, told Belga the incident was a cyberattack in which the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode.

Colruyt Group, which operates Spar stores in Belgium under a franchise system, said five shops had their fridge systems attacked.

European Business Magazine put the Belgian count higher: about 40 Delhaize stores and at least 15 Carrefour Belgium stores, with Spar outlets and the butchery group De Laet en Van Haver also reporting problems, and temperatures pushed as high as 55 degrees Celsius. Belgian stores had thrown away an estimated 100,000 euros of food, and early estimates put total losses in the millions of euros, the magazine reported.

"We have identified an IT incident affecting the refrigeration systems," Ahold Delhaize said, in a statement European Business Magazine reported, citing Euronews.

Sweden stores shut on Monday morning

In Sweden, ICA stores in Sjobo and Tomelilla stayed shut on Monday morning, and Coop confirmed six affected sites, European Business Magazine reported. The manager of the ICA store in Sjobo said: "We can't adjust the temperatures, we can't change them."

One Swedish ICA store said on social media that its refrigerators and freezers had been hacked overnight and set to 50 degrees Celsius, and said later that it had since opened. At an ICA Baronen store in Stockholm, a notice said all the shop's freezers were broken due to a cyberattack. The store's sales manager said the attack happened at 2 a.m. and was noticed at 5.30 a.m.

"We are aware that a limited number of stores were affected by an incident overnight, which impacted their refrigeration and freezer systems," a spokesperson for ICA said in an email.

John Billow, head of Sweden's national cybersecurity centre, told Reuters the centre was working on several such incidents around Sweden. "We have in recent weeks identified that we have quite a lot of exposed operational technology devices in Sweden that we have been clear about the necessity to update or patch," Billow said.

Coop told Swedish daily Aftonbladet that six of its stores had been affected by similar incidents.

An Estonian chain was also affected, with temperatures set to 50 degrees, technology supplier Kitman Coldtech told public broadcaster ERR. "This is very fresh, it happened this morning," Kitman chief executive Jann Mutso told ERR. He declined to name the chain.

France was hit last month

The new incidents follow an attack in France last month, on October 12. Police said hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets, raising temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and causing fires and food losses, Reuters reported. The French stores belonged to Intermarche, Carrefour, Monoprix and Cooperative U, and France's CERT-FR traced the weak point to internet connected remote controllers, including Danfoss AK-SM and AK-SC units and Copeland and Dixell xweb devices, European Business Magazine reported.

Authorities have not indicated who was behind last month's incidents in France, and there were no claims of responsibility.