Hackers who seized refrigeration controls at French supermarkets hit 80 Coopérative U stores, chief executive Dominique Schelcher said, adding that losses at a single hypermarket could reach 200,000 euros.
Key Points:
- Coopérative U says 80 of its roughly 2,000 stores were hit, but most managed to fight off the attack.
- Hackers pushed fridge and freezer temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, spoiling food and causing fires.
- France's cybersecurity agency reportedly traced the breach to a flaw in Danfoss refrigeration software.
Coopérative U Attack Damage
Schelcher said on Tuesday that a large majority of the 80 affected stores, out of about 2,000 in the network, managed to counter the attack. Only a minority had to throw away food, he added. He credited store owners, their teams and refrigeration technicians with acting fast enough to avoid broken equipment and empty shelves.
Losses at a small store could run to tens of thousands of euros, Schelcher explained in a radio interview, though he said he did not yet have a total figure. On Monday, retailers had put the number of targeted Coopérative U outlets above 100.
The attack began overnight Sunday, when hackers raised fridge and freezer temperatures to as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) at hundreds of French supermarkets. Paris prosecutors confirmed the breach and said it had sparked fires. It also reached some 300 Intermarché and Netto stores, 80 Carrefour supermarkets, about 5% of Monoprix outlets and several E.Leclerc locations.
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Danfoss Software Flaw
A source close to Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said France's national cybersecurity agency had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish firm Danfoss. The company said the affected units ran outdated firmware and that it had long urged customers to update or replace older equipment.
Control panels typically run a store's entire bank of fridges and freezers, and maintenance companies can adjust them over the internet from anywhere. Intermarché chief executive Thierry Cotillard put nationwide losses at tens of millions of euros in a single day. Felix Aime, an analyst at Sekoia, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium were also affected.
Cybersecurity analyst Steven Lachance warned that the next target could be energy infrastructure or hospitals, calling the attack "a global wake-up call."
The breach came two months after cybersecurity firm Claroty published research on Aug. 9 describing flaws in Danfoss systems that could let attackers bypass authentication. France's retail federation has since pressed Danfoss for full transparency.
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