Supermarket chains in at least six European countries reported cyber incidents affecting refrigeration systems on Monday. Stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, the Netherlands, Ireland and Sweden were affected.
In Stockholm, staff at an ICA store on Odengatan threw away spoiled food from freezers that had lost power on November 2. One store in Sweden said a cyberattack was to blame.
A day later, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned businesses to prepare for attacks or risk empty shelves. The agency, which is part of GCHQ, published its annual report on Tuesday.
Older Equipment at the Center of the Attacks
The latest incidents follow an attack on October 12 that hit freezers in between 500 and 700 French supermarkets. Temperatures in some units rose as high as 50 degrees Celsius.
French authorities believe international actors were involved in that attack. No official blame has been made, and no group has claimed responsibility for any of the fridge hacks.
Pavlina Pavlova, founder of the cybersecurity non-profit Critical Cyber, said many of the controllers hit in France were older models. She said they no longer receive security updates, even though flaws in them have been known since 2025.
“They are reachable and undefended,” Pavlova told Euronews Next. She said the systems run on old technology that is deprioritised or impossible to patch.
Refrigerators, heating and security systems are often connected to the internet so store owners can monitor them remotely. Any device connected through an app or a cloud network can, in theory, be hacked.
Once inside a network, an attacker can change settings, lock out users or switch a device off entirely. Hackers can also gather information from the network.
Marta Rybczynska, founder of the cybersecurity company Ygreky, said the attackers had no clear financial gain. She said that, by elimination, a state-supported group is likely behind the attacks, unless others were copying the method.
She said instructions for attacking these systems are easy to find online. She also said many shops did not see themselves as possible targets and did not add protection after the French attack.
Pavlova said AI-driven vulnerability detection makes it faster and easier to find and exploit weak points. She said patching at that speed remains a bottleneck for defenders.
UK Agency Points to AI and China
The NCSC report said artificial intelligence is “helping to industrialise cyber attacks.” It said AI is highly likely to be used against Britain’s critical national infrastructure by 2028.
The agency said state-backed attackers are not relying on new forms of AI. Instead, they use it to find weak points, pick targets and work more efficiently.
NCSC chief executive Richard Horne said the UK faces “a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents.” He said this is because long-tolerated vulnerabilities can now be found and exploited at a much larger scale.
In a speech on Tuesday, Horne said the UK has done “tech on the cheap” for decades. He warned that business leaders who fail to prepare may one day have to explain why food is missing from shelves.
The report named China as the “most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge facing the UK.” It said China, Russia and other nation states will highly likely use AI routinely in cyber operations by 2028.
The NCSC’s incident management team received 1,831 reports of cyber attacks this year. Of those, 80 were judged to be of national importance.
Security minister Dan Jarvis said the government is using AI to stay ahead of attackers. He pointed to a new National Cyber Shield and an AI Cyber Security Centre of Excellence.
