Hackers Turn French Supermarket Fridges Into 50°C Ovens

Hackers have remotely raised temperatures in refrigeration systems at hundreds of French supermarkets, causing fires and food losses, in a cyberattack that also coincided with a security incident at Dutch grocery retailer Ahold Delhaize.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said a “large-scale” attack was “affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France”. Reported damage included “food losses and fires”.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu instructed the National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) to investigate, a person in his office said, adding that France “was coordinating with its European counterparts, as other countries may also be affected”.

Les Mousquetaires, the owner of Intermarche, said about 150 of its stores had been affected, with refrigerator temperatures rising to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) for six hours. The retailer discarded the food to avoid health risks, a spokesperson said.

Carrefour (CARR.PA) said 80 of its supermarkets had been hit, although the vast majority of its 6,000 stores were unaffected.

Cooperative U Chief Executive Dominique Schelcher also confirmed his supermarket group had been targeted.

“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” he wrote on X.

Other major French supermarket chains, including Monoprix, E.Leclerc and Auchan, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A person close to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish engineering company Danfoss.

Danfoss said it was “aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management systems”.

The affected units “were running outdated firmware”, the company said, adding that it had “long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions”.

The incidents highlight the cybersecurity risks facing connected industrial equipment, including refrigeration systems that help supermarkets preserve perishable food. A compromise of such systems can disrupt operations and cause losses even when payment systems and customer databases remain unaffected.

Dutch supermarket operator Ahold Delhaize, which owns the Netherlands’ largest supermarket chain Albert Heijn and operates several grocery chains in the United States, said it was dealing with a “security issue” in its network and had taken several systems offline as a precaution.

Albert Heijn’s smartphone app told customers that a “cybersecurity incident” had disrupted grocery deliveries.

Online orders account for about 10% of Albert Heijn’s sales, while its physical stores remained open. Dutch news agency ANP reported that rival retailers had experienced an influx of delivery orders.

It was not immediately clear whether the Dutch incident was connected to the attack on French supermarkets.

Ahold Delhaize is the fourth-largest grocery retailer in the United States. Websites for its Stop & Shop, Giant, Hannaford and Food Lion chains displayed notices saying “site temporarily down”.

It was unclear whether other operations had been affected.

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