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France's national blood service has confirmed a cyberattack that tampered with the refrigeration controls at three of its cold-storage facilities overnight between Sunday, November 1 and Monday, November 2, putting stored blood products at risk before alarms and an on-duty technician stopped the interference in time.
The Établissement français du sang (EFS) said in a statement published on Tuesday, November 3, that it was not itself directly targeted: the attack hit a refrigeration equipment supplier, and the monitoring and control systems for cold rooms at three of its sites were affected, with temperature and defrost thresholds set to very high levels. Reports identified the supplier as Coolworld, which maintains refrigerated equipment for the EFS, including in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, although the EFS did not name the supplier publicly. The settings were changed from around minus 30 degrees Celsius to a 110-degree setpoint — a programmed setting, not necessarily a temperature the units or their contents actually reached.
The cold rooms held donor samples used for transfusion safety monitoring, frozen plasma intended for transfusions, and plasma used to manufacture medicines. Fresh frozen plasma must generally remain at minus 25 degrees Celsius or below, so prolonged warming would have made supplies unusable.
The EFS said its monitoring and alarm systems detected the anomaly quickly: an on-duty technician noticed temperatures rising overnight and intervened, and affected products were transferred or secured. The organisation said no blood samples or products were altered, no health impact has been identified and no loss of blood products has been reported, and that blood collection and distribution continued without interruption. France's Health Ministry said there were zero operational consequences because the problem was spotted in time.
The incident is part of a wider wave of attacks on refrigeration systems across Europe. Around 700 French supermarkets were hit on October 11-12, and stores in at least 11 European countries were targeted on November 1-2, with attackers remotely manipulating temperature settings and defrost functions. France's cybersecurity agency CERT-FR had warned on October 12 about vulnerabilities in Danfoss refrigeration controllers. The EFS said its technical teams are working with France's national cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, and the Health Ministry, and have stepped up monitoring of refrigeration equipment and temperatures. No attackers have been identified, and no group has claimed responsibility, demanded a ransom or been reported to have stolen data.