OMM Newsroom
A wave of cyber-attacks affecting supermarket chains in at least nine European countries on Monday has raised concern about a deliberate effort to disrupt the food supply chain, BBC World reported.
Retailers in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden reported problems. Temperatures in refrigeration units reportedly rose as high as 50C (122F), forcing some retailers to discard food. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The incidents come three weeks after a cyber-attack disrupted as many as 700 grocery stores in France, causing food losses estimated at tens of millions of euros.
The security of refrigeration systems and other devices monitored remotely has added to concerns about government-backed hybrid attacks. EU Commissioner for Food and Agriculture Christophe Hansen said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption in the future.
European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier did not attribute blame. “These incidents of course show once again how cyber-attacks can disrupt essential services and affect citizens’ daily lives,” he said, adding that the incidents were “not isolated” and that countries needed to be resilient and prepared.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government convened a meeting with intelligence chiefs. It said the impact was “currently very limited” and that most of the food distribution chain had up-to-date security systems able to fend off such attacks.
At least four “Co-op” supermarkets in Sicily and one business in Tuscany were affected, according to Italy’s national cybersecurity agency. Meloni’s office said the affected businesses were “mostly still equipped with obsolete security systems, with interfaces directly exposed to the internet and inadequate authentication mechanisms”.
Belgium was among the hardest-hit countries, with dozens of stores reporting refrigeration failures. Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation. Mathieu Tilman, a manager at a “Delhaize” supermarket, said he was shocked by the attack and distressed by the amount of food being thrown away.
In Ireland, 13 “SuperValu” stores were affected in what their owner, “Musgrave Group”, called a cyber-incident. A company spokesman said on Monday that replenishment of chilled and frozen products in the affected stores was under way.
A small number of corner shops in the Netherlands also experienced disruption. Last month, supermarket chain “Albert Heijn” took several services offline following a separate cyber-attack.
In Portugal, the “Mosqueteiros” group said incidents at seven “Intermarché” stores had been linked to a cyber-attack that “appears to have targeted an external service provider responsible for managing the refrigeration systems”.
Swedish chain “ICA” said a “limited number” of its stores had experienced refrigeration problems but did not confirm a cyber-attack. Sweden’s national cybersecurity agencies said they were monitoring the incident.
In Finland, irregular temperatures were detected in a few smaller grocery stores belonging to the “Kesko” group, which said it was investigating. Estonia’s public broadcaster ERR reported that hackers had raised the temperature in the refrigeration units of at least one supermarket to 50C.
In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has urged retailers to update software on fridge temperature controls. The agency said the country was likely to face an AI-powered cyber-attack on critical national infrastructure within two years.
NCSC head Richard Horne told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that there had been a couple of cases in the UK where “vulnerable technology has been exploited” following the attacks. He said the full impact was not known and that the agency was working with the organisations concerned.
Asked whether there was evidence that supermarkets in Britain, or freezers of the same make or model, had been targeted, Horne said the issue extended beyond supermarkets to the entire food supply chain. He said the NCSC had been alerting organisations whose exposed technology was vulnerable.
