Hackers hit supermarket fridges in Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg

Same method as in France

Sabcobel, a company that installs refrigeration systems, mobilised its technicians in the middle of the night. Its CEO, Stephan Moelans, said his team spent the whole night and morning disconnecting affected installations from the network, and the firm counts about twenty compromised systems. He said the attackers used "exactly the same mechanism" as in France: forced defrosting.

Sweden was hit too. The chains ICA and Coop reported similar incidents, and in one Swedish store temperatures exceeded 50 °C.

The pattern echoes the attack of the night of 11–12 October in France, where hackers took over refrigeration systems at hundreds of supermarkets, including Intermarché, Super U and Leclerc. Temperatures there also rose to 50 °C, and losses ran to tens of millions of euros. France's cybersecurity agency ANSSI found that the attack relied not on a sophisticated flaw but on "elementary security failings": equipment exposed directly to the internet and protected by weak, easily guessed passwords. That has led to speculation that relatively inexperienced attackers using AI may have been behind it.

Why it matters

The main risk is replication, one expert warned after the French attack: the method is public and cheap, and vulnerable equipment will not be replaced within weeks. Belgian refrigeration firms are now trying to close the gaps. Moelans said the simplest fix is to manage refrigeration units through a secure internet connection, the approach most of the group's French customers adopted after October's incident.