France urges owners to take compromised refrigeration controllers offline

The French government is recommending that supermarkets and other businesses take their cooling systems offline if they’ve been affected by the recent cyberattack.

According to the French Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-FR), a large number of cooling systems from the Danish manufacturer Danfoss were compromised in France.

In case refrigerator controllers are affected, the agency advises limiting network access to the vendor only. On top of that, a factory reset is required.

Furthermore, all available security and firmware updates must be installed, default passwords changed, and supermarkets should review existing accounts.

Lastly, access should only be restored via a secure VPN or protected local network.

“Generally speaking, exposing a management interface to the internet is contrary to good practice,” CERT-FR says in an alert bulletin.

Earlier this week, around 400 Intermarché, Netto, and Coopérative U stores were hit by a cyberattack. Some systems were set to 50°C, causing food to go bad in several hours.

Dominique Schelcher, President of Coopérative U, confirmed the incident on X, calling the targeting of equipment essential to food preservation and supply “unacceptable.”

In a recent message posted on X, Schelcher states that 80 stores in Coopérative U’s network are affected by the cybersecurity incident. He also announced an investigation to determine the root cause of the attack.

“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products is an attack on the French food supply chain. It is unprecedented, extremely serious, and unacceptable. We remain fully mobilized,” Schelcher said on X on Tuesday.

Around the same time, Dutch food retailer Albert Heijn reported a cybersecurity incident on Sunday that affected its online services.

Albert Heijn has temporarily taken its logistics systems offline, meaning that online orders can’t be delivered to customers until further notice. The pricing issue on the electronic shelf labels has been fixed, but Albert Heijn’s loyalty program “Mijn AH” still isn’t working.

Systems at the parent company, Ahold Delhaize, are also down. The same goes for all Ahold chains in the United States, including Food Lion, Giant Food, Hannaford, Stop & Shop, and The GIANT Company.