Hackers defrost store fridges in cyberattack on hundreds of French supermarkets
Attackers hijacked outdated Danfoss refrigeration controllers and triggered defrost cycles at Intermarché, Carrefour, Monoprix and Super U stores. Paris prosecutors have opened an investigation.
Symbolic image · Photo: TCY / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Hackers tampered with refrigeration systems at numerous French supermarkets overnight into Monday, remotely triggering forced defrost cycles, according to security media. Broadcaster BFMTV reported temperatures were set as high as 50 degrees Celsius. Intermarché said 150 of its stores were hit, Carrefour said the incident primarily affected 80 of its roughly 6,000 stores, and Groupe Casino said 5% of Monoprix supermarkets were affected. French media put the total in the hundreds.
Intermarché said the targeted systems were controllers made by Danish supplier Danfoss. Danfoss confirmed the affected models were either obsolete (AK-SM800 and AK-SC355) or had not been updated (AK-SM800A), Infosecurity Magazine reported. How the devices were compromised remains unclear. In Haguenau in Alsace alone, two stores lost 270,000 euros worth of goods, according to BFMTV.
The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the "large-scale cyberattack." France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI has reportedly identified the software involved and is coordinating with European counterparts. Coopérative U president Dominique Schelcher called the attack "of utmost gravity, unprecedented [and] unacceptable."