French supermarket fridges hacked

Cyberattack sparks fires, spoil food

PARIS:

Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, causing fires and spoiling food.

The Paris prosecutor's office said on Monday that a "large-scale" attack was "affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France", leading to food losses and fires.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has instructed France's National Cybersecurity Agency to investigate, a person in his office said.

France was coordinating with European counterparts because other countries could also be affected, the person said, adding that authorities were assessing whether other French companies were at risk.

Felix Aime, a senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at Sekoia Threat Detection and Research, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium had also been affected.

Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were hit, while Monoprix, which operates about 490 stores in France, said 5% of its stores were affected.

Les Mousquetaires, owner of retailer Intermarche, said fridges at around 150 of its stores were heated up to 50 C for six hours overnight. A spokesperson said all affected food had been discarded to eliminate health risks.

Paris resident Geert de Clercq witnessed staff at an Intermarche in central Paris throwing cartfuls of defrosted frozen foods into a giant trash container, with molten ice cream sloshing out of broken tubs on the street.

Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket group had also 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.

Food retailers E.Leclerc and Auchan did not respond to requests for comment.