Retail giant Ahold Delhaize takes systems offline after cyberattack

Retail giant Ahold Delhaize, one of the world's largest food retail chains, confirmed today that it was forced to take some systems offline after a "cybersecurity incident."

As a wholesale company and multinational retailer, Ahold Delhaize operates more than 9,400 local stores across Europe, the United States, and Indonesia, employs nearly 400,000 people, and serves around 60 million customers each week through physical retail locations and online.

Ahold Delhaize reported yearly net sales of over $104 billion in 2024, and it owns a wide range of brands, including Delhaize, Maxi, Mega Image, Albert, bol, Alfa Beta, Etos, Gall & Gall, and Profi in Europe, and Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant Food, and Hannaford in the American market.

In a succinct press release published earlier today, the company added that it's working to mitigate the incident and that its stores are open to customers.

"Ahold Delhaize is experiencing a security issue within its network. Our teams are taking steps to assess and mitigate the issue. This includes taking some systems offline to help protect them. At this time, our stores are open and serving customers," it said.

"Protecting our infrastructure in the best interest of our customers, associates and partners is a top priority. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused customers and partners."

However, employees at the Stop & Shop American regional supermarket chain are having trouble accessing their schedules and pay stubs, while customers have been unable to use websites, apps, and customer service platforms at Albert Heijn, Etos, and Gall & Gall stores in the Netherlands, and Delhaize in Belgium.

According to an internal memo shared by Food Lion employees in the United States, the company flagged the incident as an IT outage and told them their "store may be unable to shop, stage, or hand off orders."

An Ahold Delhaize spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when BleepingComputer reached out to ask whether the incident affected both corporate and store systems, if disruptions affected stores worldwide, and if any devices were encrypted during the attack.

This is the second major cybersecurity incident to affect Ahold Delhaize in recent years, after the personal, financial, and health information of over 2.2 million individuals was stolen in a November 2024 ransomware attack that impacted the company's U.S. systems, claimed by the ransomware group INC Ransom.