A strange Monday morning
Imagine walking into your grocery store and finding the ice cream case warm. Now imagine that happened at dozens of stores, in seven countries, on the same night.
That’s what happened overnight into Monday, November 2. BBC reports that supermarkets across seven European countries were hit by a cyber-attack on their fridges and freezers. (A cyber-attack just means someone broke into a machine over the internet.)
The countries, according to BBC:
- Belgium and Luxembourg: about 40 Delhaize supermarkets.
- Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland: a smaller number of shops.
How hot did it get?
Freezer temperatures in several shops reportedly rose as high as 50°C. That’s 122°F, hotter than a scorching summer afternoon.
One ICA store in Sjöbo, in southern Sweden, didn’t mince words on social media: “Our refrigerators and freezers have been hacked overnight and they have set the temperature to 50 degrees.”
How did they do it?
Here’s the part that surprises people. Most supermarket fridges and freezers are hooked up to the internet. The Guardian says that’s so repair crews can look after them from far away and get an alert when something breaks. Think of it like a spare key under the doormat for the repairman. Handy, until the wrong person finds it.
Sabcobel, a Belgian company that makes some of the affected fridges, says the units were switched into “defrost” mode. That’s the setting that warms a freezer up to melt the ice. It’s believed to be the same trick used on French supermarkets last month.
Sabcobel’s boss, Stephan Moelans, called it a cyber-attack. He told the Belga news agency his team worked “all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network.” He also said a software fix alone isn’t enough. The units need physical changes.
Who got hit
Store chains told reporters about the damage:
- Belgium: Carrefour says 15 of its Belgian stores were affected. The company that runs Spar shops there says five had their fridge systems attacked. Ikea says its store in Mons was affected too.
- Ireland: 13 SuperValu supermarkets. The owner, Musgrave Group, says the problem was limited to one “specific model” of fridge.
- The Netherlands: The Danish manufacturer Danfoss told Dutch radio that at least 17 companies were attacked overnight, including butcher shops and small neighborhood stores.
- Sweden: Several ICA and Coop supermarkets.
- Finland: Some K-stores found fridge problems. The owner, Kesko, says its security experts are looking into the cause.
The cost: food in the dumpster
Warm freezers mean spoiled food, and stores threw it out. Freezers had to be emptied at several ICA stores in Sweden. A photographer caught a worker in Stockholm hauling out bags of spoiled food.
One Delhaize store in Hoeilaart, Belgium, told the news site Het Laatste Nieuws it lost 100,000 euros’ worth of food. (Euros are the money used in much of Europe.)
This has happened before
This is round two. In October, French police said hackers took control of cooling units at up to 700 French supermarkets. The Guardian reports they pushed thousands of freezers and fridges from as cold as -27°C (about -17°F) to well over 50°C.
In that attack, the Guardian says, the hackers first switched off the alarms. Then they changed the thermostats or stretched the defrost cycle by hours. Danfoss says it found security holes the year before and had “long recommended” that customers install updates.
Who’s behind it?
Nobody knows yet. BBC says it’s unclear who is behind the latest apparent attack. National cybersecurity agencies in Belgium and Sweden say they’re watching closely. No incidents have been reported in the UK.
What this means for you
You don’t run a supermarket. But more and more ordinary machines are online now, from store freezers to the thermostat on your wall.
Moelans says the simplest fix is running the fridges over a secure internet connection, and that most of his customers switched to that after the French attack.
The lesson: anything plugged into the internet can, in the wrong hands, be fiddled with from far away.
Sources
- BBC, “Shop freezers in seven European countries hit by cyber-attack,” James Gregory, Nov. 2, 2026: bbc.com
- The Guardian, “Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack,” Jon Henley, Nov. 2, 2026: theguardian.com