No one knows why a hacker or group of hackers decided to remotely overheat French supermarket refrigerators, sparking fires and spoiling millions of euros worth of food that had to be tossed out, but they did. And all thanks to an outdated, un-updated security system riddled with easy-to-exploit loopholes, as The New York Times reported.
Affecting over 400 supermarkets across France, including several major chains that supply densely populated urban areas, the grocers found their industrial fridges cranked up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, effectively low-temp cooking tons of food that can easily spoil, and it did just that.
Hackers Turned French Supermarket Fridges Up to 122°F, Sparking Fires and Spoiling Food
Apparently, when you leave operational technology connected to the internet without a security patch for who knows how long, hackers can digitally walk in and try to turn the milk aisle into the yogurt aisle.
The chaos led to towering mountains of spoiled meat and melted frozen foods being tossed into dumpsters across the country, with some actual fires erupting from overheated fridges.
Danfoss, the Danish engineering company whose software runs the now-hacked industrial fridges, said that the affected refrigeration units were “end-of-life” systems running legacy firmware that hadn’t received security updates in ages. France’s National Cybersecurity Agency and Paris prosecutors are coordinating with neighboring European countries since similar refrigerator attacks might have occurred in Portugal, Spain, and Poland, according to Reuters.
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