Hacker attack on supermarkets in Europe, which countries were affected and how it happened

A major cyber-attack has hit Europe in recent days, targeting supermarkets, in particular by raising refrigerator temperatures very high.

The most recent attack is very similar to the one in October in France: on that occasion too, hundreds of supermarkets were hit. The most recent one extended more geographically, going from Italy to Ireland and from Portugal to Luxembourg and Estonia.

How were the coolers attacked? The refrigerated counters are connected to the network, to allow remote maintenance. The weak link that was hit is the control unit to which the freezers are connected. Being in turn connected to the supermarket's network - and therefore in some cases to the external network - allowed hackers to carry out a widespread attack.

The addresses of these tools are not designed to resist similar dangers and in most cases the software was out of date. Danfoss, a Danish company that produces this type of product, announced that two of the control units most affected in the attacks in France in October had no longer received software support for several years.

However, systems of this type are widespread. There are approximately 13 thousand refrigeration services connected to the network, which can be found via search engines by linking other objects connected to the network. 80% of Danfoss systems use software that was not updated even after the attacks in France.

The risks, however, were well known. In May 2025, the American cybersecurity agency found (and communicated) bugs on Danfoss software. In August this year, a cybersecurity company declared that this type of vulnerability could allow food to be "thawed", as actually happened.

Palazzo Chigi said the impact in Italy was limited.