Supermarket freezers bog down as European countries hit by cyber-attack

International

REFRIGERATORS and freezers in several supermarkets across seven European countries crashed after they were hit by a cyber-attack

Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland, a report by BBC said.

Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up. The same incident happened in hundreds of French supermarkets.

Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time.

Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize's systems, on Monday told the Belga news agency that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had been "working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network".

Following hte French attack in early October, the company had been working to "protect our customers’ fridges against this vulnerability."

Because of the cyber-attack, units needed physical modifications, not just software updates.

Most supermarkets across Europe are linked to the internet, and maintenance and troubleshooting can be done remotely.

"The simplest solution is to manage the fridges over a secure internet connection. Most of our customers switched to that after the attack in France," Moelans added.

The temperature of freezers in several shops across Europe reportedly rose to as high as 50C (122F).

It was still unclear who was behind the series of cyber-attacks.(MyTVCebu)