Fridge and freezer cyberattacks hit supermarkets across Europe, spoiling food in multiple countries

Supermarkets and food suppliers in at least 10 European countries reported fridge and freezer temperatures surging on Monday in apparent cyberattacks, with readings as high as 50C (122F) forcing retailers to throw out food. Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt said an overnight IT incident heated dozens of stores in Belgium and Luxembourg, and Swedish chains ICA and Coop reported similar spikes. Problems were also reported in Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and Germany. Meat suppliers in the UK were hit too, but Paul Chichester of the National Cyber Security Centre said the national impact was minimal. EU agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption, while Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier did not assign blame. Italy's government called a meeting with intelligence chiefs. The attacks came about three weeks after a cyberattack disrupted as many as 700 French grocery stores. No culprit has been established.

The Guardian leads with the UK angle and Chichester's reassurance that impact was minimal, adding experts' view that this may be the "foothills" of a wider threat, that decoy-device attacks resembled Russia-linked operations, and that the French attack exploited old systems with default passwords. CBS News focuses on the chains involved, citing Reuters, a Delhaize spokesperson, the head of refrigeration firm Sabcobel and an October police report by Ahold, and frames the event as a second incident on interlinked infrastructure. The Blaze and Breitbart use more urgent wording: "AGAIN" and "Destroying Millions of Dollars of Food." They put Hansen's description of a deliberate attempt to disrupt food supply up front. Breitbart adds named retailers such as Carrefour, EDEKA and IKEA, a count of over 100 sites, a defrost-mode explanation and a warning to update software. Both sides agree on the 122F peak, the repeat pattern and the unknown culprit. The left offers more technical and reassuring context, the right more alarm and loss figures. The BBC's coverage largely echoes the EU-alarm emphasis.