Punto Coop Palermo: 'Refrigerators at 50 degrees, food thrown away'

A "surreal situation": this is the one experienced in some of the Sicilian supermarkets affected by the hacker attack which targeted the cold chain, tampering with the temperatures of the cold rooms and resulting in the loss of a considerable quantity of food products. "The entire frozen food counter was emptied and disposed of, as was the poultry counter, because the cells were compromised" is the story that comes from the Coop point in Piazzetta Bagnasco, in the heart of Palermo between Piazza Politeama and the Teatro Massimo.

"The night alarm that should have signaled the shutdown of a system did not go off", explained Mario Giannitto, area manager of Coop Gruppo Radenza, taking stock of the targeted supermarket in the city's parlor. So the director and the employees only realized the next morning that something was wrong: on the display of the cold rooms the temperatures "were not suitable" for the legal standards. The hackers, according to the manager, "connected to our VPN by changing the temperature set point and the vaporizers, which should maintain temperatures between minus 18 degrees and minus 25 degrees, were set to 50 degrees". At that point the workers started emptying the fridges to throw away the goods. "The desks were as if they were detached, we didn't understand what had happened, it was surreal", reported an employee.

The same scene experienced in a supermarket in Catania: "We tried to save some goods that were in some still cold tubs, but we were forced to throw most of them away". The damage estimate in all the group's stores would be thousands of euros. Once the leak was plugged, the supermarkets involved took action by turning to suppliers to fill the fridges again, until the situation returned to normal. And 24 hours later, at the Coop point in Palermo, customers no longer complained about product shortages. "I learned about the hacker attack from the news but this morning I went shopping and didn't notice anything unusual, the freezers were full," said a housewife. Throughout Sicily, hackers would have targeted between twenty and thirty stores. "In terms of food safety our group is at the top, but in this case we were unable to control the temperatures because the cyber attack obscured the remote management systems", and this "had never happened", explained Giannitto. "It is therefore an issue that will need to be addressed," he added.