The European Union held two meetings to discuss the repercussions of the electronic hack that targeted cooling systems on Monday, and to discuss ways to coordinate with member states, according to what an EU spokesman said on Tuesday.
The spokesman explained that the first meeting was held with the joint working group for cybersecurity between the European Union institutions, which includes European institutions and agencies, including the European Police Agency (Europol). As for the second meeting, it was held within the framework of the “EU-Cyclone” cooperation network, which links national authorities in European Union member states and is responsible for managing large-scale cyber incidents and crises, according to Reuters.
In a related context, the cybersecurity official in Britain warned of the possibility of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents in the coming months, noting that China “most likely has the intention” to carry out cyber operations supported by artificial intelligence targeting vital infrastructure, according to Agence France-Presse.
The warning from Richard Horne, CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, came after the release of the Centre’s latest annual report on cyber threats, which estimated the cost of dangerous activities to British institutions at approximately 14.7 billion pounds ($19.7 billion) annually. The report added that the losses resulting from cyber attacks are equivalent annually to the value of the cyber security sector in the United Kingdom.
The report warned that by 2028, China, Russia and other countries are highly likely to regularly use AI-powered cyberattacks to achieve their geopolitical goals, which will expose Britain to more sophisticated, broader and faster-implementing attacks. He pointed out that China most likely has the intention and ability to employ artificial intelligence in operations targeting vital national infrastructure and other strategic goals.
For his part, Horne said that Iran is “carrying out harmful cyber operations globally,” in light of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, calling on British institutions to make cybersecurity and the ability to confront attacks a basic requirement, not a secondary matter.
He warned that failure to invest in appropriate technologies to confront these threats will place officials facing difficult accountability, especially “when store shelves become empty of food, the lights go out, and companies collapse.” He explained that the escalation of risks is not due to artificial intelligence inventing new methods of attack, but rather to the fact that security vulnerabilities that were overlooked for a long time have become possible to discover and exploit them on an unprecedented scale.
As part of enhancing preparedness for these risks, the British government announced the allocation of about 10 million pounds to help small and medium-sized companies protect their systems from cyber threats, after last month it revealed plans to expand funding allocated to the safety of artificial intelligence. Concerns about the security of this technology have increased in recent months, following security incidents linked to models developed by the companies “OpenAI” and “Anthropic” during the testing stages.
These warnings come at a time when attacks on vital sectors and major companies are increasing, as electronic hacking groups targeted British brands and retail stores, the most prominent of which was the attack on Jaguar Land Rover last year, which led to major disruptions in its car production operations.
In Italy, the attacks that affected the cooling systems in major stores in at least nine European countries prompted the government to hold an emergency meeting, on Tuesday, that included the heads of the intelligence services and the National Cybersecurity Agency, which in turn issued technical guidelines to help retail stores protect their systems.
These attacks, for which no party claimed responsibility, raised European fears of deliberate targeting of food supply chains. The disruptions included stores in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, and some stores were forced to get rid of food supplies after temperatures rose inside the refrigeration and storage units. These incidents came three weeks after a cyberattack targeted stores in France, destroying food stocks in hundreds of branches.
European Union Commissioner for Food and Agriculture, Christoph Hansen, said that the bloc takes the incidents “very seriously,” adding that they represent a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it.
Also in Italy, Giovanni Arena, representative of the Federal Distribution Federation, one of the major federations of retail companies, said that he was aware of about 20 stores being damaged on the island of Sicily. Giuseppe Spadaro, director of a group that runs Cobb stores on the island, said that four of the company's 300 stores were affected by the attack, forcing it to get rid of its food stocks, estimating the losses at several thousand euros.
In Sweden, Carlos Cancinos, spokesman for the Cobb department store chain, announced that only seven stores out of more than 800 were affected by the attack, and that the affected branches had returned to work normally. He explained that the damaged refrigeration equipment and freezers were connected to old 4G networks, noting that the company launched a program to modernize refrigeration systems connected to the Internet and operate them via 5G networks.
Belgium was among the most affected countries, as dozens of stores belonging to several retail chains reported malfunctions in their cooling systems, prompting federal prosecutors to open an investigation. The affected stores included branches of “Carrefour”, “Delhaize”, “Kohlerauit” and “Intermarche”, as well as a branch of the “IKEA” chain in the city of Mons. Four branches of Delhaize in Luxembourg were also affected, and temperature disturbances were observed inside a number of small stores belonging to the Kesco group in Finland.
In this context, Ronnie Kokkola, an information security specialist at the National Cybersecurity Center of the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (TRAVICOM), said that the expansion of attacks to other European countries was expected after the incidents witnessed in France, indicating that exploitation of security vulnerabilities is occurring at a faster pace and on a larger scale.
