Supermarket fridge hack spreads from France to Belgium

Hackers took remote control of refrigeration systems in dozens of supermarkets in Belgium overnight from Sunday 1 to Monday 2 November 2026, pushing fridges and freezers into defrost mode and forcing shops to throw away food. According to 01net, the method matches the attack that hit hundreds of French supermarkets three weeks earlier.

What happened

The Belgian news agency Belga, cited by 01net, reported that the attackers took control of refrigeration equipment remotely and switched it to defrost mode. Temperatures then rose inside fridges and freezers and put the stock at risk. In some shops, fridge and freezer temperatures reached 15 °C.

Sabcobel, a company that installs refrigeration systems, sent its technicians out in the middle of the night once the problem was spotted. Its chief executive, Stephan Moelans, said he had “spent the whole night and the morning disconnecting the affected installations from the network”. Sabcobel counts about twenty compromised installations.

The supermarket chain Delhaize warned its store managers about the cyberattack. Some managers called in refrigerated lorries to save their stock. Delhaize described the event as an “IT incident” that hit fridges and freezers in dozens of its supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Delhaize was not the only victim. 01net reports that Carrefour stores, five Spar convenience shops and some Ikea stores were also affected. In many shops the cold chain was broken, and fresh and frozen products were thrown away as a precaution.

The attack also reached beyond Belgium. In Sweden, the retailers ICA and Coop reported similar incidents, and in one Swedish shop the temperature inside the fridges went above 50 °C.

Why it matters if you live in France

France was hit first. On the night of 11 to 12 October, hackers took control of refrigeration systems in hundreds of French supermarkets, including Intermarché, Super U and Leclerc. Temperatures rose as high as 50 °C, and the big retail groups had to dispose of a huge quantity of food. 01net puts the losses at tens of millions of euros.

The Belgian attack shows that the method has spread. Stephan Moelans said the hackers used “exactly the same mechanism” in Belgium: forcing refrigeration units into defrost mode. 01net concludes that the French attack most likely inspired the hackers who struck Belgium.

The risk had already been flagged in France. A few hours after the October attack, Samuel Hassine, chief executive of the cybersecurity firm Filigran, told 01net: “For retailers, the main risk is replication: the method is public, cheap, and the stock of vulnerable equipment will not be replaced in a few weeks.” The Belgian incident bears that out. French supermarkets that have not secured their equipment remain exposed to the same technique.

The French investigation explains why the attack was so easy to copy. ANSSI (Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information, France’s national cybersecurity agency) found that the attack did not rely on a sophisticated flaw but on “basic security failings”. The equipment was directly exposed on the internet and protected by weak passwords that were easy to guess. For this reason, 01net reports, the attack is thought to have been launched by inexperienced hackers using AI tools.

Shoppers in France were affected mainly through stock losses on the shelves. In both countries, retailers threw out chilled and frozen food once the cold chain had been broken, rather than selling products whose storage temperature could no longer be guaranteed.

There is also some reassurance in the reporting. According to 01net, most of Sabcobel’s clients in France switched to managing their refrigeration through a secure internet connection after last month’s attack. Moelans describes this as “the simplest solution”. Anyone who works in food retail, logistics or facilities management in France should see the episode as a warning about connected equipment left open on the internet with default or weak passwords.

What to watch next

Belgian refrigeration engineers are now closing the gaps to prevent another incident, 01net reports. The main question is how quickly retailers across Europe secure the rest of their equipment, given Samuel Hassine’s warning that vulnerable systems cannot be replaced within a few weeks.

The spread from France to Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden in about three weeks suggests other countries could be next. In France, it remains to be seen whether retailers that have not yet moved to secure connections will do so before a second wave. 01net is also asking which other connected devices could be targeted in the same way, a sign that refrigeration may not be the last system affected.

Source: 01net