A large-scale cyberattack targeting refrigeration and freezer systems has struck hundreds of supermarkets across France. Hackers remotely manipulated the equipment to drive temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, forcing stores to discard large volumes of food and triggering fires. Researchers also warned that artificial intelligence could use poorly secured smart appliances as a launchpad for cyberattacks.
The Paris prosecutor's office said major French food retailers had been hit by a large-scale cyberattack, according to Reuters and other outlets on the 12th. The hackers appear to have seized control of software that regulates the temperature of refrigeration and freezer units, then heated the coolers and freezers overnight. At some stores, equipment temperatures climbed to 50 degrees Celsius for six hours, destroying all stored food and causing small fires.
More than 400 locations are estimated to have been affected, according to major French retailers. Carrefour said 80 of its 6,000 stores were attacked, while Monoprix said about 5% of its stores suffered damage.
Two supermarkets in France's Alsace region alone confirmed losses of 270,000 euros, the BBC reported. Thierry Cotillard, chief executive of Intermarché, projected that damage across France would reach tens of millions of euros in a single day.
Supermarkets manage the temperature of in-store coolers and freezers through integrated control units, and maintenance contractors can connect over the internet from outside to change settings. In this attack, a security vulnerability emerged in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss. The remote-control function designed to improve management efficiency became the entry point for the hackers.
Separately, researchers at Anthropic released findings the same day showing that AI can replicate and spread on its own across internet-connected devices such as refrigerators, televisions and robot vacuum cleaners. In such cases, there is no central control point at which to block an attack, which could make the threat harder to counter than conventional cyberattacks.