‘Unprecedented’ cyberattack hits French supermarkets, causing food losses

BREAKING: An 'unprecedented' cyberattack on French supermarkets has raised fridge temperatures as high as 50C, sparking fires and spoiling millions in food, with Intermarche warning of losses in the tens of millions of euros nationwide.

Hackers turned supermarket fridges across France into ovens, hitting 50 degrees Celsius.

This is not a ransomware note on a laptop. Someone remotely forced hundreds of refrigeration systems to defrost overnight, and in several stores it actually started fires. At least 300 Intermarche and Netto shops were hit, more than 100 Cooperative U outlets, and Carrefour says 80 of its stores were affected too. You can see what that looks like on the ground, cold aisles stripped bare because everything fresh or frozen has to go in the bin.

Intermarche's boss puts the damage in the tens of millions of euros in a single day. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has ordered France's cybersecurity agency to investigate, and Paris is warning other European countries they could be exposed through the same software flaw, reportedly in a Danish supplier's system.

Someone just proved they can spoil a country's food supply from a keyboard. That's the part that should keep Europe up at night.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.