Following attacks on refrigeration equipment in hundreds of French supermarkets and malfunctions in cold storage facilities at several military facilities in the United States, similar anomalies have occurred in Belgium and Sweden.
According to Bloomberg's report on November 2nd, the Belgian supermarket chain Delhaize confirmed that on the evening of November 1st, approximately 40 of its stores experienced an 'IT incident', which affected their refrigeration systems. Additionally, a few stores of the Belgian supermarkets Carrefour and Spar also reported similar issues.
In Sweden, abnormal increases in refrigerator temperatures have been reported at several stores of the ICA and Coop supermarket chains. In particular, a ICA supermarket in the town of Söderblommen in Sweden reported on social media that the temperature inside its refrigerators had reached 50 degrees Celsius, suspecting a hacker attack.
An official from ICA confirmed that some of the stores' refrigeration and freezing systems are affected, and the company is helping these stores with the issue. However, the official did not confirm that the incident was caused by a cyber attack.
ICA accounts for one-third of the Swedish food retail market, while Coop's share is approximately 17%.
The report notes that this incident is reminiscent of a large-scale cyberattack in France last month. At that time, the refrigeration systems of about 700 supermarkets were compromised, forcing stores to discard a large amount of spoiled food. Supermarkets such as Carrefour were affected. So far, no organization has publicly claimed responsibility for this hacking attack.
The supermarkets under the Dutch retail group Ahold Delhaize also suffered a cyberattack last month, resulting in service interruptions for several days and empty shelves with some goods.
In addition, in late August this year, refrigerators in military storerooms at at least six military bases in the United States malfunctioned. In one of the incidents, the temperature setting of the refrigerators was manually increased at night, resulting in a large amount of food spoiling and melting the next morning.
According to reports from Reuters on October 29, four people familiar with the matter said that the U.S. Department of Defense is investigating the abnormal malfunctions of refrigerators at several military bases as a suspected hacker attack.
