Hackers Turn Supermarket Freezers to Defrost Across Four Countries

Hackers switched supermarket refrigerators to defrost mode across four European countries, destroying food at dozens of stores in a single overnight wave. Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden all reported spoiled goods, forcing supermarkets to throw out defrosted or otherwise unconsumable stock.

Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt confirmed the hacks overnight, per Reuters. A Belgian company that operates Delhaize's systems said the attackers had changed the refrigerator settings to defrost.

The damage is straightforward. Warm fridges and freezers ruin perishable stock within hours. Stores hit by the attack had to discard entire batches of refrigerated goods.

Is this connected to earlier attacks in France?

Yes. Last month, hackers hit refrigerators across France using the same method: deliberately raising the temperature on the units. That wave caused food spoilage at hundreds of supermarkets.

Security researchers traced those attacks to a specific weakness. The compromised units were internet-connected refrigerators made by Danish manufacturer Danfoss. The company no longer provides security updates for those models. The security firm Claroty had warned in August — before either attack wave — that the units were at risk of remote hacks and outages.

The mechanism matters for every retailer running connected equipment. Once a vendor stops patching a device, that device stays online but loses its defenses. Attackers who find the flaw can reach it for as long as the hardware runs.

What does this mean for the food supply chain?

The freezer attacks show how cyberattacks produce physical losses, not just stolen data, and the food sector has already absorbed this lesson. In 2025, a cyberattack on UNFI, one of the largest food distributors in the United States, caused food shortages and empty shelves at grocery stores and supermarkets across the country.

In both cases the root cause was the same pattern: weak or overlooked cybersecurity practices in operational equipment. A fridge that a vendor stopped patching is a door left unlocked.

Are government facilities at risk too?

U.S. Department of Defense officials are reportedly investigating whether freezer units on military bases were hacked by Iran-backed hackers. The same Iranian actors were blamed for cyberattacks targeting U.S. water providers earlier this year.

The Pentagon inquiry adds a defense dimension to what began as a retail problem. If military freezer units share the same unpatched hardware, the exposure extends well beyond grocery aisles.

For retailers, the immediate task is inventory triage and equipment audits. The longer-term question is who pays for connected appliances that outlive their vendor's security support — and how many more of them sit, unpatched, in the cold chain.