Supermarkets and stores across Europe — including IKEA — have been hit with cyberattacks that are affecting fridges and freezers, and, in turn, have resulted in countless losses.
“A hacking attack on European supermarkets spread across the continent on Monday, hitting fridges and freezers from Sweden to Belgium and forcing stores to throw away food in an incident that echoed a similar attack in France last month,” Reuters reported on Monday, Nov. 2.
Food Had To Be Thrown Out at Dozens of Stores
The cyberattack, which raised temperatures in refrigerators and freezers, affected dozens of stores, including Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt locations in Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as ICA and Coop stores in Sweden.
The Guardian also notes that “[t]he attack hit fridges in Belgian branches of Carrefour, Intermarché and Ikea, Coop and ICA in Sweden, Delhaize in Luxembourg, Kesko in Finland, SuperValu in Ireland and shops in Estonia.”
Beyond that, at least one IKEA store was involved, according to Reuters.
“Everything is destroyed,” Engla Ingwall, sales manager at an ICA franchise store in Stockholm, told Reuters. “There has been a cyberattack and all our freezers reached 50 degrees (Celsius).”
Ingwall added that although the cyberattack occurred at 2 a.m., it took hours before the situation was discovered.
Once the company realized what had occurred, employees could be seen both emptying the fridges and freezers, as well as throwing out affected food.
This Follows Earlier Suspected Cyberattacks
The cyberattack that has just taken place in Europe comes after one that took place last month in France. In that incident, “hackers seized control of cooling units at hundreds of supermarkets, causing fires and food losses,” per Reuters.
That’s not to overlook the fact that a comparable situation took place in August at six US military base commissaries, possibly more. The Guardian notes that the Pentagon is investigating the situation as “a suspected hack.”
“It is not known who is behind this attack, and it may never be determined,” said Katrien Eggers, spokesperson for Belgium’s Centre for Cybersecurity, while referring to the October incident. Reuters also notes that “no one has claimed responsibility for either attack” that has taken place in Europe.
However, the issue has sparked concern, with Eggers explaining, “All IT systems are potentially vulnerable, and AI can now be used to successfully exploit these weaknesses — especially by sophisticated actors.”
Rafe Pilling, the senior director for threat intelligence at the cybersecurity company Sophos, also spoke about the situation, saying, “The two most plausible attribution scenarios for me are some kind of state-based signaling and demonstration of capability or some kind of lone-wolf hacker that is conducting these attacks for their own personal reasons.”
Cyberattacks on IKEA and Supermarket Fridges Hit Europe — ‘Everything Is Destroyed’