Supermarket freezers overheat in Sweden and Belgium in suspected cyberattack

Overnight failures in Sweden and Belgium

Refrigeration and freezer units at supermarkets in Sweden and Belgium overheated during the night to Monday, 2 November, according to statements from the chains and local media. In Sweden, the private grocer ICA and the Coop group confirmed that a number of their stores were affected. In Belgium, Ahold Delhaize said an 'IT incident' had hit fridges and freezers in dozens of its stores. NewsIT also said that supermarkets in Luxembourg and Estonia had been targeted and that temperatures in many cases reached 70 degrees Celsius, although the Estonian detail was not repeated by the other reports.

Sweden: freezers set to 50 degrees

The clearest case came from an ICA Kvantum store in Sjöbo, in Skåne county in southern Sweden. The store said on social media that its fridge and freezer temperatures had been set to 50 degrees Celsius. Its store manager, Rickard Nilsson, told TV4 that staff found the temperatures had changed that morning and could not reset them. Hot air was coming out of the freezers, and food worth several hundred thousand Swedish kronor had to be discarded. The store intends to report the incident to the police. NEWS 24/7 reported that freezer temperatures at ICA and Coop stores rose as high as 55 degrees Celsius. Coop told Aftonbladet that six of its stores were affected, while NewsIT, citing the BBC, said seven of Coop's 800 Swedish stores were hit and that the company described the situation as limited and under control.

Belgium: dozens of stores hit

Delhaize told Belgian media that about 40 of its stores were affected. Carrefour said it was investigating the incident at 15 of its Belgian stores, and local media reports put the number of affected Spar stores at 5. RTL Info reported that Delhaize sent a message to store managers around 4 a.m. warning that temperatures in the cooling facilities had begun to rise. An earlier report from that morning had cited at least four Delhaize stores, while later reports put the figure at 40.

Delhaize, Belgium40

Carrefour, Belgium15

Spar, Belgium5

Coop, Sweden (per Aftonbladet)6

Delhaize, Belgium

40 stores

Carrefour, Belgium

15 stores

Spar, Belgium

5 stores

Coop, Sweden (per Aftonbladet)

6 stores

Data from the article text

Cause still unclear

Neither ICA nor Coop has said what caused the failures. The ICA spokesperson described only an incident that affected cooling systems during the night, and Ahold Delhaize referred to an IT incident. It is not yet clear who was behind the attacks or whether the Swedish cases were cyberattacks at all. The same uncertainty applies to whether they are linked to the attack in France. One report also said 13 SuperValu stores in Ireland had been affected, without giving further detail.

Mid-October attack in France

French police said last month that hackers had taken control of cooling units in hundreds of supermarkets, causing food losses and fires. That attack is dated to mid-October, and NEWS 24/7 reported that a fridge temperature there reached 80 degrees Celsius in one case. According to SKAI, Ahold Delhaize had also reported an earlier cybersecurity incident to Dutch police in October. NEWS 24/7 added that the Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit is investigating the French attacks.