Belgium, Sweden and Estonia, but also Holland, Luxembourg, Ireland and Finland. And then Italy. Several countries would have suffered a hacker attack on the refrigeration systems of some supermarket chains very similar to that suffered by France, Belgium itself and the Netherlands a few weeks earlier. The temperatures of refrigerators and freezers have risen to 50 degrees above zero, making large quantities of preservative food unusable and suggesting the action of computer pirates.
Among the shops affected were also several stores in Sicily. These are "some Coop sales points, at least three in Catania and one in Palermo", declared Giuseppe Spadaro, general manager of the Radenza group, which manages Coop-branded supermarkets. The attack led to the modification of temperature parameters, overheating the counters and causing food spoilage.
The shops affected in Sicily
The attack took place "at 4 in the morning", Spadaro specifies. "We are calculating the damage. In some cases we have solved it. We have already contacted the National Cybersecurity Agency and activated the protocols to carry out in-depth investigations." The postal police is reconstructing the origin of the attacks and the extent and is verifying whether or not there are links with what happened in other European countries.
The stores affected in Europe
Among the shops affected in Europe there is also an Ikea department store in Belgium, in Mons. "The repetition of the cyber attacks" which have affected dozens of supermarkets in Europe "is deeply worrying. It is a deliberate attempt to interrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumer confidence in it: a warning that we must take seriously", commented the EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Christophe Hansen, assuring that "food safety" in the EU "is not currently at risk, but waste food and the impact on businesses are real" and that he will raise the "issue with fellow commissioners at the next meeting" of the EU college.
The alert in Italy
Tomorrow, at 11.30 am, a meeting will be held at Palazzo Chigi, coordinated by the Undersecretary to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano, to take stock of the wave of hacker attacks. This was reported by sources at Palazzo Chigi. The Director of the National Cybersecurity Agency and the Directors of the Intelligence Agencies will participate. Meanwhile, the National Cybersecurity Agency has reminded operators of large-scale retail trade, food logistics, industrial refrigeration and maintenance companies to take the security measures already recommended after the digital incidents in a series of supermarket chains in France. The Agency has intensified all monitoring given the widespread territorial distribution of the sector to identify any further possible cases of attack.
According to what Adnkronos understands, Copasir is also ready to ask the government for information on what is happening. Tomorrow, at 2pm, the meeting of the Committee was already scheduled with the agenda of hearing the director of the Information Agency for Internal Security (Aisi), Bruno Valensise; it will therefore be an opportunity to meet and ask the executive for updates on the situation.
Shops hit in Sweden
"We're emptying the freezers right now, there's not much else we can do," said Dennis Vidal, the manager of one of the shops in southern Sweden affected by the problem. "They are starting to cool down again, but everything is already ruined," he added, interviewed by public television, Svt. Some supermarkets of the ICA and Coop chains remained closed in the early hours of the morning of November 2nd to manage the crisis, but there is still no official confirmation of the cause but a hacker attack is feared: "We are aware of the fact that a limited number of stores were affected by an incident that occurred during the night which compromised the refrigeration and freezing systems of the stores," said Gustaf Nilsson, spokesperson for the ICA Group supermarkets, reported by the TT news agency.
