The cyber disruption impacted retail outlets across nine EU member states as well as parts of the United Kingdom's meat industry. Investigators discovered that attackers took advantage of outdated software and external third-party refrigeration management providers exposed to the internet. The event comes just three weeks after a related incident compromised cooling units in up to 700 French grocery locations. Cybersecurity leaders are now urging food retailers to patch remote control systems to prevent further hybrid infrastructure attacks.
Key points
Hackers are actively targeting remotely managed retail software to intentionally disrupt…: Hackers are actively targeting remotely managed retail software to intentionally disrupt critical European food supply chains.
Third-party technical service providers and internet-exposed legacy infrastructure repres…: Third-party technical service providers and internet-exposed legacy infrastructure represent significant vulnerabilities for commercial supermarket networks.
Intelligence officials advise critical supply chain operators to immediately patch temper…: Intelligence officials advise critical supply chain operators to immediately patch temperature software amid threats of AI-powered infrastructure sabotage.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
- Published
A spate of cyber-attacks that hit supermarket chains across at least nine European countries on Monday has prompted European Union officials to warn of a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain.
Supermarkets have reported problems in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden, and the significant increase in freezer temperatures has forced retailers to discard food.
Temperatures in chains across Europe reportedly rose as high as 50C (122F).
No-one has yet admitted carrying out the cyber-attacks.
The European Union has raised concerns about the attacks, which come three weeks after a cyber-attack disrupted as many as 700 French grocery stores, causing food losses estimated at tens of millions of euros.
The security of refrigeration systems as well as other devices that can be monitored remotely has heightened concerns about government-backed hybrid attacks.
The EU's food and agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, said the bloc was taking the incidents very seriously and warned of further disruption in the future.
Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier was careful not to attribute blame, but said: "These incidents of…
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