European supermarket operators were upgrading refrigeration systems on November 3 after a second wave of cyberattacks raised temperatures in stores across eight countries the previous day, forcing retailers to discard food, Reuters reported.
The incidents affected seven Coop stores and 23 ICA stores in Sweden, an Edeka store in Germany and 15 Carrefour locations in Belgium.
Coop said it was moving from 4G connections to 5G and modern modems, while disconnecting affected refrigeration systems from the internet. Danfoss, whose controllers were again among the systems targeted, said it was working with customers and recommended that refrigeration equipment not be directly accessible from the public internet. The UK National Cyber Security Centre said it was on heightened alert and helping organizations identify and close vulnerabilities; the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA called for rapid information-sharing and coordinated responses.
Carrefour Belgium said the impact was limited to 15 of its more than 700 stores, with no hypermarkets affected and all locations remaining open. The latest developments follow the November 2 refrigeration disruptions reported across Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden, as retailers continued investigating the incidents.
On November 3, Greece’s National Cybersecurity Authority said it had warned on October 14 about exposed commercial refrigeration controllers from Danfoss, Copeland/Dixell and Carel after identifying more than 300 systems accessible from the internet. Its notice called for removing controllers from public internet access, securing remote connections with VPNs and multifactor authentication, changing default passwords, installing security updates and replacing unsupported equipment.
No perpetrator has been publicly identified. Authorities have not established whether the latest incidents were carried out by the same operators responsible for the earlier attacks in France.
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