See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
Supermarkets in at least seven European countries have seen their fridges and freezers soar to temperatures of 50 C in another cyber attack like last month ‘s in France, according to the Guardian .
Stores in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden reported issues with their refrigeration systems. Several companies said they were hacked. EU food commissioner Christophe Hansen said the recent attacks were “a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it.”
The attacks follow similar ones that were conducted in France last month, when hackers broke into fridges in as many as 700 supermarkets and raised temperatures as high as 50 C, causing some fires. Tens of millions of euros in food were lost.
More devices, including refrigerators can now be remotely controlled, and European authorities are now worried about Russian government-sponsored hybrid attacks following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
‘Everything was destroyed’
Swedish grocery chain Coop told local media that six shops were hit. ICA said it was “aware that a limited number of stores were affected by an incident overnight which impacted their refrigeration and freezer systems.” One store in Sjobo said its fridges and freezers were hacked and temperatures were set to 50 C. A Stockholm store said its freezers were cyber-attacked at 2 a.m. and that “everything was destroyed.”
Dutch supermarket chain owner Ahold Delhaize says dozens of its stores in Belgium and Luxembourg were hit. It reported a similar incident to Dutch police last month.
Who’s behind it?
According to the Guardian, no “hacktivist” group has claimed responsibility, nor has a gang using ransomware come forward to demand money. Rafe Pilling, senior director for threat intelligence at cybersecurity company Sophos, told the outlet a state actor, or a lone wolf, are the most likely culprits.
“The two most plausible attribution scenarios for me are some kind of state-based signalling and demonstration of capability or some kind of lone-wolf hacker that is conducting these attacks for their own personal reasons,” he said.
An actor linked to a hostile government would be the most believable, Pilling adds, due to the psychological impact the attack has on the population. North Korea is believed to be the culprit behind last week’s Binance crypto heist , but intelligence chiefs in Western countries say China and Russia are looking at different ways of waging war on the West. Russia, in particular, has developped an elaborate online network of saboteurs to conduct cyber attacks on western nations, particularly European nations that support Ukraine.