France supermarket food spoilage hack hit hundreds of stores on Monday after major French supermarket chains said a cyberattack forced refrigeration systems to heat up. E. Leclerc, Intermarche and Cooperative U said spoiled food had to be thrown away.
Intermarche and Cooperative U
At least 300 shops of Intermarche or its Netto brand were targeted, and more than 100 Cooperative U outlets were affected. Dominique Schelcher said the attack had affected refrigeration systems since Sunday night and that his teams were fully mobilised to restore the situation as quickly as possible.
He also said the attack on equipment essential to fresh products and the food supply of the French people was extremely serious and unprecedented, and that an investigation would be necessary to shed full light on it. For stores, the immediate burden is disposal: Intermarche said affected branches would have to throw away all fresh and frozen products.
Danfoss and legacy regulators
BFM TV said hackers remotely triggered forced defrosting in numerous stores, which explains why the fridges no longer held safe temperatures. That is the operational failure that turns a cyberattack into a spoilage event, because the cooling loop is being overridden rather than simply switching off.
A source close to the issue said refrigeration control systems from Danfoss were targeted, and Danfoss said most of the affected equipment was legacy products that no longer receive software or security updates. Danfoss also said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected, with one AK-SM800 version using outdated firmware and the company having long advised supermarkets to move away from those models.
French authorities and wider risk
Paris prosecutors confirmed the attack, while a person close to French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said France's cyber security agency had identified a software vulnerability supplied by a Danish company and had contacted the vendor. The same source said the agency was also working with European counterparts and trying to identify other French companies involved so they could be warned before the spread widened.
E. Leclerc said one of its refrigeration equipment suppliers had been affected and that the disruption reached several stores, which suggests the problem traveled through equipment management rather than a single branch-level fault. The unresolved question is how the attackers gained access to the refrigeration systems and whether other countries were actually affected.
