Hackers cranked French supermarkets’ freezers up to 50 degrees, causing hundreds of stores to lose their stock

What happened

Overnight from Sunday to Monday, a large cyberattack hit the refrigeration systems of hundreds of French supermarkets, BFMTV revealed. Hackers hit French supermarkets via unpatched Danfoss refrigeration systems, remote-heating freezers and destroying stock worth millions.

The attackers targeted equipment from the Danish maker Danfoss that many French stores use to regulate their cold. Fresh and frozen stock was destroyed, and the Paris prosecutor says there were also fires. Refrigeration systems have a forced defrost function that clears ice buildup, and the attackers appear to have triggered it remotely in a continuous mode, with a temperature setting of 50 degrees.