Supermarkets in several European countries have reported refrigeration failures that left food at higher-than-safe temperatures and forced some stores to discard stock. The incidents come as the Pentagon investigates whether similar failures at French supermarkets and U.S. military stores were linked to cyberattacks. No official evidence has established a connection between the cases. For retailers, a refrigeration outage can quickly translate into lost inventory and disrupted operations.
Failures reported at Delhaize, Carrefour and other chains
Stephan Moelans, chief executive of Belgian refrigeration installer Sabcobel, said about 20 refrigeration systems at Delhaize, Carrefour and Spar stores failed between Sunday night and early Monday. Sabcobel began dispatching technicians at 1 a.m. and disconnected the affected equipment from the network to contain the problem.
Swedish chains ICA and Coop reported similar failures, as did stores in Luxembourg and Estonia. ICA Kvantum Sjöbo in Sweden said on social media that its refrigerators and freezers had been accessed overnight and their temperatures raised to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Food stored at the shop had to be discarded.
ICA said only a small number of stores were affected. They use external suppliers, and their systems are separate from ICA’s central network, which was not impacted. The full scope and cause of the failures have yet to be confirmed.
French incidents affected hundreds of stores
The latest reports resemble failures at French supermarkets last month, when refrigerator and freezer temperatures were raised at hundreds of stores. Food spoiled, and some incidents led to small fires. The affected retailers included about 80 Carrefour stores, roughly 24 Monoprix locations and 150 Intermarché outlets.
Intermarché and E.Leclerc reported combined losses of about 270,000 euros, or approximately $300,000. Christopher Whyte, an associate professor of homeland security and emergency preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University, said spoiled frozen food cannot be recovered, turning equipment failures into direct business losses.
Similar refrigeration failures were reported at about six U.S. military base stores in August. The Pentagon is investigating whether the French supermarket incidents and the failures at military stores may have involved cyberattacks. Whyte noted that the incidents occurred close together and involved similar systems, but said those similarities do not establish a link.
Connected equipment raises exposure for retailers
Nadiya Kostyuk, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Strategy and Technology, said the growing number of internet-connected devices expands the systems that outside attackers could potentially reach. Refrigeration equipment is gaining more functions, she said, but security may not always be a design priority; existing systems also need to be assessed for possible points of entry.
Whyte said supermarket chains often use the same or similar equipment across multiple stores, meaning a weakness in one system could indicate comparable exposure elsewhere. Refrigeration failures can also affect inventory directly: food losses and store disruption can follow quickly when equipment stops working.
The European Commission said incidents of this kind show how cyberattacks can disrupt services, affect businesses and reach into people’s daily lives. But no official finding has confirmed that the recent European failures, last month’s incidents in France and the U.S. military store outages were caused by the same actor or operation. The affected equipment, causes and resulting losses remain to be established.