In a nutshell: Cyber attackers are causing major headaches for grocery shoppers across Europe. On Sunday night, hackers targeted refrigeration systems at around 150 Intermarché stores, forcing employees to toss out food that is no longer safe to consume. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
A spokesperson for the supermarket chain told Bloomberg that attackers infiltrated controls for the cooling systems and activated the defrost mode, which heated them to 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Roughly six hours passed before employees noticed. By that time, all of the food in the coolers had been ruined.
The attack wasn't limited to Intermarché stores. According to Agence France-Presse, fewer than 100 Cooperative U stores were also hit. BMF added that some Leclerc stores were also impacted. La Dépêche reports that electronic pricing label systems were also impacted.
Bloomberg said the systems targeted in the Intermarché attack were managed by Danfoss. Just a few months back, security researchers with Team 82 published a report highlighting multiple vulnerabilities in Danfoss refrigeration controllers that could lead to this exact sort of attack. It is no surprise, then, that an attack materialized in the real world.
The immediate fallout from the attack isn't fully clear, outside of the obvious inconvenience to shoppers, supermarket employees, and food suppliers. Early reports pin the financial loss at around 300,000 euros, but that figure could climb much higher as the full scope of the attack comes into focus.
Dominique Schelcher, CEO of Cooperative U, said teams have been dispatched to their stores to fix the issue, adding that they will conduct a full investigation into the matter. No suspects have been publicly identified as of this writing.
It is entirely possible that this was a test run used by the attackers to demonstrate its effectiveness. If deployed in conjunction with other destructive attacks on the power grid or utilities, the effects could be devastating. It is the sort of worst case hacking scenario we've been warned about for years – fortunately, it hasn't materialized... yet.