‘Unprecedented’ cyberattack targets refrigeration units at hundreds of French supermarkets

Relevance to the sub: unprecedented large-scale attack on the food supply chain of France, demonstrating major vulnerabilities on civilian infrastructure amid rising threats by malicious actors

At least 400 French supermarkets belonging to various retailers have been hit by a massive, "sophisticated" cyber-attack that disrupted the refrigeration chain, causing material damages and major food losses across the country on Monday.

According to E Leclerc, one of the retailers affected by the attack, the hackers managed to hijack the system that controls the defrosting of refrigerators and freezers, and forced them to warm the storage units to unsafe temperatures overnight. Employees who opened the refrigerators on Monday morning describe being hit by "heatwaves", as some units were heated up to 50C (120F), even causing fires in some supermarkets.

The Danish manufacturer Danfoss, who supplies the units hit by the attacks, stated that the units affected were obsolete and had not been patched properly, leading to the vulnerabilities that allowed the hackers to carry out the attack.

The scale of the damage was still unclear, but the losses could run up to tens of millions of euros as supermarkets were forced to throw out tons of food tainted by a rupture in the cold chain.

The Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into the incident that was described as "unprecedented" in scale, and the office of the Prime Minister is "closely" following the investigation.

France was hit by several cyberattacks in recent years targeting public administrations, private companies, hospitals, or news agencies, ranging from DDOS attacks, ransomwares or data leaks, carried out by criminal organizations seeking ransoms, foreign actors seeking to disrupt the country or nihilistic actors seeking to cause mayhem, but this is the first time that the food supply is targeted with significant material loss.

While authorities are prudent about the source of the attacks at this stage of the investigation, President Emmanuel Macron warned last month that Russia was ramping up "hybrid warfare" against European countries, and ordered the government to beef up defenses around critical infrastructures, citing past actions in neighboring countries and intelligence reports about threats in France.