Suspected hacks spoil supermarket food across Europe

A fresh wave of suspected cyberattacks disrupted refrigerator and freezer systems at supermarkets in several European countries, forcing stores to throw away food that could no longer be sold safely. The apparent intruders changed settings on remotely managed cooling equipment—sometimes sending units into defrost mode or sharply raising temperatures—rather than targeting checkout systems or customer data. The damage appears limited to a portion of each retailer’s stores, but it follows a similar incident at hundreds of French supermarkets just weeks ago. No one has been identified or linked the two episodes, yet the pattern shows how a routine piece of store equipment can become a costly physical target once it is connected to a network.