Refrigeration units and freezers at supermarkets in at least seven European countries malfunctioned during the night of 1 to 2 November, rising to temperatures of up to 50°C (122°F) in what some of the companies affected said were suspected to be cyber-attacks, following a similar wave of attacks in France last month that affected hundreds of supermarkets and forced companies to discard millions of euros of food.
The failures affected about 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg, with a smaller number of premises affected in Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden, retailers said on Monday.
EU food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen said the repeated attacks were a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it”.
Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize, which reported a similar incident to police at the time of the French attacks last month, said the range of fresh and frozen products in affected shops was “temporarily somewhat limited” due to the incident, without specifying the nature of what had happened.
Reporters visiting a Delhaize shop north-east of Brussels saw a sign stating that refrigerators and freezers were empty “due to cyber-attacks”.
The affected Delhaize shops include five Spar outlets, Shop & Go convenience stores attached to Q8 service stations, and some Proxy Delhaize mini-markets, reported.
Stephan Moelans, the chief executive of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize’s refrigeration systems, told the paper that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had “spent all night and morning disconnecting the affected installations”, starting at 1 a.m.
He told the Belga news agency that the units’ evaporators were switched to defrost mode.
Food destroyed
An ICA shop in Sjöbo, Sweden, said in a social media post that its fridges and freezers had had their temperatures set at 50°C, while another in Sweden said its freezers had been attacked at about 2 a.m.
The US Army Criminal Investigation Division said last month it is investigating similar incidents on several military bases within the United States and was liaising with French authorities.
No one has claimed responsibility for the hacks.
Such incidents highlight concerns around “hybrid attacks” that could disrupt critical physical infrastructure.