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Supermarkets across seven European countries were forced to throw away large quantities of chilled and frozen food after hackers remotely tampered with refrigeration systems overnight into Monday, November 2, 2026, pushing freezer temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and turning units meant to keep food frozen into heaters.
The attacks hit stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland, in what retailers and cybersecurity agencies are treating as a coordinated second wave of attacks on the food supply chain. Staff arriving in the morning found cabinets warming up instead of holding their usual freezing temperatures, and in several stores the affected food had to be destroyed.
According to the Belgian refrigeration company Sabcobel, which operates systems for the Delhaize chain, the attackers switched the evaporators in affected units into defrost mode. Defrost mode is meant to clear ice briefly, but left running it makes the units heat up instead of keeping food cold. In other stores, the temperature setting itself was raised remotely.
In Belgium and Luxembourg, Ahold Delhaize said an IT incident affected refrigeration at several dozen Delhaize stores, temporarily limiting the range of fresh and frozen food. Carrefour Belgium said 15 of its more than 700 stores were affected, Colruyt Group said five Spar stores were hit, Intermarché reported 10 to 15 stores with fridge problems, and IKEA said refrigeration at its store in Mons was affected. One Delhaize branch estimated its stock losses at 100,000 euros, before counting lost trade while it was closed.
In Sweden, Coop said someone tampered with refrigeration equipment without permission at seven of its roughly 800 stores, while ICA said a limited number of its stores were affected. An ICA Kvantum store in Sjöbo, in southern Sweden, said on social media that its refrigerators and freezers had been set to 50 degrees Celsius and that staff were throwing out the affected goods. In Ireland, Musgrave Group said a cyber incident affected refrigeration at 13 of its SuperValu sites. In Estonia, a freezer at a Selver supermarket was set to 50 degrees, though its temperature rose only a few degrees before the problem was fixed within about 10 minutes and no products were damaged. In the Netherlands, Danfoss said the refrigeration systems of at least 17 businesses, including butchers and small local shops, were tampered with.
The systems at the centre of the attacks are refrigeration controllers made by the Danish engineering company Danfoss, which allow retailers to monitor and control their equipment remotely over the internet. Danfoss said the affected units were older models whose security software could not be updated to address an identified risk, and that some of the units attacked in the Netherlands were not connected to a protected network and still used their default passwords.
The November 2 attacks came about three weeks after a similar attack in France on the night of October 11, when hackers hit roughly 700 stores, including more than 300 Intermarché and Netto outlets, over 100 Coopérative U stores, 80 Carrefour stores and around 30 Monoprix outlets. At one store in Normandy, fridges showed 80 degrees, and Intermarché counted 150 outlets with refrigerators at 50 degrees for six hours. The head of Intermarché's parent company put the losses at tens of millions of euros in a single day, and the Paris prosecutor's office opened a cybercrime investigation.
After the French attack, France's national cybersecurity agency issued an emergency alert naming the vulnerable equipment, and Belgium's Centre for Cybersecurity followed a day later, telling retailers to disconnect their refrigeration controllers from the internet. One industry estimate suggested around 4,500 of the affected controllers were still openly reachable online across Europe when the second wave struck.
No group has claimed responsibility for either wave of attacks, and no authority has publicly named a culprit. Belgium's and Sweden's national cybersecurity agencies said they were monitoring the incident, and the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with international partners and industry, while confirming that no incidents had been reported in Britain. United States authorities are investigating refrigeration malfunctions at several American military bases in August and working with French officials to establish whether they are linked.
The incident has renewed concern about the cybersecurity of everyday critical infrastructure. The targeted refrigeration systems are often connected to the internet so operators can monitor and adjust temperatures remotely, and hackers can exploit weak passwords, outdated software or unsecured network connections to gain access and override the controls, destroying perishable food within hours without stealing a single item.