Cyber attacks have apparently paralyzed supermarkets in Europe

Supermarkets in several European countries allegedly fell victim to a cyber attack on Monday night. The retail group Delhaize announced that an “IT disruption” had affected cooling systems in dozens of its supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg. In Belgium alone, around 40 Delhaize branches were affected.

All supermarkets reported a sudden increase in temperature in the cooling systems. The Belgian markets of Carrefour and Spar were also affected, as the Belga news agency reported. According to the cooling technology service provider Sabcobel, the systems were put into defrost mode remotely. “We started mobilizing technicians from 1 a.m. tonight to bring the situation under control,” said Sabcobel CEO Stephan Moelans.

In Sweden, the ICA and Coop chains were affected on Monday. A Swedish supermarket said on social media that the temperature in its refrigerators and freezers had been turned up to 50 degrees. Several branches were affected by the overnight outage, the company ICA said. However, the supermarket chain does not yet want to speak of a hacker attack.

According to broadcaster RTÉ, 13 supermarkets were affected in Ireland. As a precautionary measure, chilled and frozen foods were removed from sale in the affected branches. In the Netherlands, at least 17 smaller shops were affected, said the cooling technology company Danfoss. One case was reported in Estonia.

The incident is similar to a large-scale attack in France last month. According to French police, hackers took control of the refrigeration systems of hundreds of supermarkets, leading to food spoilage and fires.

According to IT security experts, comparable cooling systems are also used in Germany. But not all grocers use the same software or hardware. But: The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has made it easier for attackers to find security gaps. So far, major German retailers have not reported any incidents comparable to those in France, Belgium or Sweden.