A sophisticated cyber attack has left dozens of supermarkets across six European nations reeling after hackers remotely manipulated refrigeration systems to melt frozen goods and spoil fresh produce. From the aisles of Delhaize in Belgium and Luxembourg to ICA stores in Sweden, freezer temperatures reportedly soared as high as 50 degrees Celsius. The chaos forced staff to dump millions of euros worth of food, with one Belgian store manager estimating a loss of 100,000 euros in stock alone, excluding the wider financial blow of temporary closures.
The technical glitch appears to have targeted specific hardware manufactured by Sabcobel, where attackers triggered the evaporators to switch into defrost mode. This mirrors a similar breach that crippled hundreds of French supermarkets last month. Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, admitted that while his team worked around the clock to sever the compromised units from the network, preventing future attacks requires more than just a software patch; many machines need physical modifications or a shift to secured internet connections.
The scale of the disruption extended far beyond Benelux and Scandinavia, reaching butchers and neighborhood shops in the Netherlands and impacting multiple SuperValu locations in Ireland. In Estonia, reports emerged of at least one major supermarket being hit among others throughout the country. While Swedish chains like Coop managed to contain the damage to a handful of outlets, the sheer variety of businesses affected suggests a widespread vulnerability in industrial cooling infrastructure.
National cybersecurity agencies in Belgium and Sweden are currently monitoring the fallout, while the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre is coordinating with international partners to dissect how the breach occurred. Although no incidents have been reported in Britain so far, officials remain on alert. As for those responsible for turning gourmet freezers into ovens, investigators have yet to identify any particular group or motive behind the digital sabotage.
