European grocery chains report fridge temperature spikes amid suspected cyber incidents

Grocery retailers in several European countries reported sudden temperature increases in store refrigerators and freezers on Monday, leading to food spoilage and prompting investigations into potential cyber incidents. Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize and Belgian chain Colruyt said an IT issue caused cooling systems in dozens of outlets in Belgium and Luxembourg to rise sharply, while Swedish chains ICA and Coop reported comparable problems in a limited number of stores.

Ahold Delhaize notified Dutch police of a cybersecurity incident in October after detecting suspicious activity in its network, and its spokesperson Sarah De Meester confirmed temperature spikes were observed on Monday. Stephan Moelans, chief executive of refrigeration specialist Sabcobel, told Belgium’s Belga news agency that a cyberattack appeared to have switched evaporators into defrost mode, prompting technicians to disconnect affected units from the network.

Swedish retailer ICA said a store in Sjöbo posted on social media that its fridges had been "hacked" and set to 50 °C, and spokesperson Helena Johansson said the company was investigating the cause and scale of the issue. Coop indicated that six of its roughly 800 Swedish stores experienced refrigeration failures, with spokesman Carlos Cancino noting that the units either stopped working or operated partially impaired, but he had not received evidence of a cyberattack.

The incidents follow a cyberattack on French supermarkets in mid-October that forced hundreds of stores to discard food after refrigeration control systems from Danish manufacturer Danfoss were compromised. European Union food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen called for greater attention to food security and warned that vulnerabilities in essential networked systems represent a new risk. No group has claimed responsibility for the recent incidents.