Four Coop Italia stores in Sicily have been targeted in the latest cyberattack on supermarket refrigeration systems, carried out on 2 November.
The hackers hit fridges in around 100 stores in Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia and Ireland, raising temperatures to 50°C and spoiling tonnes of food.
Three Coop Italia stores in Catania and one in Palermo, were affected.
“We have verified that it is an attack on our remote control system for frozen-food counters. After a careful screening it appears there is no further damage, but the attack did take place,” said CEO Danilo Radenza, CEO of Coop Radenza, which operates Coop Italia’s Sicily stores. “We are calculating the damage. In some cases we have fixed the problem. We have already contacted the National Cybersecurity Agency and activated protocols to carry out in depth investigations.”
Similar attacks were carried out last month, with targets including Cooperative U, a French retailers’ co-op of independent hypermarkets and supermarkets
That attack, on 11 October, affected hundreds of supermarkets across France, with reports of fires as well as food losses. Cooperative U saw 80 stores affected, with Intermarche and Carrefour among other retailers hit.
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“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” wrote Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher on X.
International concern is growing over the attacks, with the EU calling them “a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence in it”.
With no hacking groups claiming responsibility or demanding ransom, intelligence chiefs have suggested the attacks may be acts of sabotage by hostile states such as Russia or North Korea.
As more and more essential supplies and services are controlled online, the vulnerability of societies to cyber sabotage increases. Supermarket fridges and freezers are linked to the internet to allow central management, technicians and contractors to monitor temperatures, run defrost cycles, diagnose faults and adjust settings remotely, eliminating the need for technicians to visit stores.
Engineering multinational Danfoss, one of the main refrigeration suppliers in Europe, says moving controls online typically cuts unnecessary engineer callouts by up to 30%, and allows stores to monitor temperatures in line with food safety laws automatically rather than by hand.
