France’s cybersecurity agency and Paris prosecutors are investigating a hack, which raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of supermarkets across the country.
The hack remotely raised the temperatures of refrigerators and freezers in the affected supermarkets as high as 50°C on the night of October 12. Tens of millions of euros worth of defrosted food had to be thrown out by just one of the affected retailers-supermarket chain Intermarche.
According to French media, France’s cyber security agency ANSSI has identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish air conditioning and refrigeration company Danfoss.
In August 9, cybersecurity firm Team82 published research, identifying ‘multiple vulnerabilities’ on Danfoss’ AK-SM 800A platform, which effectively provides a remote operational control centre for the company’s refrigeration infrastructure.
Team82 said Danfoss had addressed the vulnerabilities following the publication of the report.
Danfoss said it was aware of incidents affecting a ‘limited number’ of refrigeration management systems running ‘outdated firmware’, adding that it had ‘long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions’.
Ahold Delhaize, a Dutch-based chain that owns thousands of supermarkets across the Continent, said in a statement that it had suffered a cybersecurity incident in its network, prompting the company to take some systems offline.
According to Reuters, France’s prime minister Sebastien Lecornu has instructed ANSSI to investigate the incident as is the office of the Paris prosecutor.
Read Peter Schwartz’s column on minimising cyberattacks in retrofits