Cyberattack on French Supermarket Refrigerators Spoils Food, Costs Millions

A cyberattack this week forced French grocery chains to throw out large quantities of refrigerated food after hackers remotely cranked up the temperature on cold-storage units in hundreds of stores. At least five major retail brands were hit: Carrefour, Monoprix, Les Mousquetaires, E. Leclerc and Coopérative U.

The CEO of Coopérative U confirmed the attack in a Monday post on X. “I confirm that a cyberattack has been affecting, since last night, the cold production facilities of several stores in our network Coopérative U,” he wrote.

“Our teams are fully mobilized, in coordination with refrigeration specialists, to restore the situation as quickly as possible. An investigation will be necessary to shed full light on this attack. 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. It is unacceptable.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office also confirmed the incident, calling it a “large-scale” attack that hit “connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France.”

Carrefour said about 80 of its stores were affected. Monoprix, which runs 490 stores nationwide, said 5% of its locations were hit. Les Mousquetaires reported that refrigerators at roughly 150 of its stores were heated to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) for six hours, and a company spokesperson said all affected food had been discarded.

No official financial tally has been released, but experts estimate losses above 10 million euros, or roughly $11.2 million. Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard put the nationwide damage even higher, telling French television the attack likely cost “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.”

A source familiar with the refrigeration systems told AFP the hackers targeted control systems made by Danish manufacturer Danfoss. Danfoss told AFP that most of the compromised equipment was “legacy” gear that “no longer receive software or security updates,” and that some units were running “outdated firmware” the company had long urged customers to update. Danfoss did not respond to a request for comment.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has ordered the country’s National Cybersecurity Agency, ANSSI, to investigate. A source close to Lecornu told AFP the agency has already identified “a vulnerability in software supplied by a Danish company and has contacted the vendor.”

Christophe Hansen, the European Union’s Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, condemned the attack as a threat to food security across the continent.

“I strongly condemn the cyberattack targeting food products at Intermarche, Cooperative U, Leclerc. Food security requires more attention at all levels. Because the weaponization of food has become a reality.”

The episode underscores a growing vulnerability in everyday infrastructure: industrial equipment that runs for years on outdated software, quietly exposed to attack long after vendors stop patching it.