--- title: Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack description: Hundreds of French supermarkets, including Coopérative U, Intermarché, Netto, Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc, were hit by a cyber attack that hijacked... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack | daily.dev og:description: Hundreds of French supermarkets, including Coopérative U, Intermarché, Netto, Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc, were hit by a cyber attack that hijacked... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/69LliVg2s.png og:image:alt: Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Hundreds of French supermarkets, including Coopérative U, Intermarché, Netto, Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc, were hit by a cyber attack that hijacked refrigeration control software made by Danish firm Danfoss. Hackers forced fridge and freezer units to heat up to 50C overnight, spoiling fresh and frozen food worth an estimated millions of euros across roughly 500 of France's 15,000 stores. Danfoss said the affected units were older models whose security software could not be patched against a known risk. French prosecutors have opened a cyber-crime investigation, and officials have called the incident unprecedented. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How did hackers cause supermarket fridges in France to overheat? Hackers gained control of refrigeration management software made by Danish firm Danfoss, which retailers use to remotely regulate cold units, and ordered affected units to heat up to 50C and stay there overnight instead of undergoing a normal brief defrost cycle. Danfoss said the compromised units were older models whose security software could not be updated against a known risk. _Follow daily.dev for analysis of how outdated industrial control software gets exploited in critical infrastructure attacks._ ### How many French supermarkets were affected by the Danfoss refrigeration hack? About 500 stores out of roughly 15,000 in France were affected, based on figures supplied by individual retail chains. More than 100 Coopérative U stores, at least 300 Intermarché and Netto stores, 80 of Carrefour's 6,000 stores, and 5% of Monoprix's 400-plus stores reported impact, with losses at just two Alsace stores reaching €270,000 combined. _daily.dev helps engineers track real-world incidents shaping how critical retail and industrial systems get secured._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 76 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-12). **TL;DR:** The overwhelming reaction is that industrial fridges should never have been remotely controllable over the internet in the first place, with heated debate over how to balance remote monitoring needs against attack surface, plus speculation about who was behind the attack and why. **Sentiment:** 2% positive · 18% mixed · 80% skeptical **The case for** - Remote monitoring lets operators detect failures quickly and dispatch technicians before food spoils. - A single person or small team can manage refrigeration across many sites remotely, reducing operational cost. **The pushback** - Allowing remote write/control access (not just monitoring) created unnecessary attack surface for no real benefit. - Many of these units were reportedly reachable directly over 3G/4G SIM cards with no real protection. - Manufacturers left older units unpatchable, which critics say pressures customers into buying new hardware. - Read-only monitoring is not foolproof since monitoring channels can themselves sometimes be subverted into control paths. - IT governance failures (installers bypassing proper networking, no one owning the system) likely contributed. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Strong consensus that these systems never should have been remotely writable, but vigorous back-and-forth over whether any remote control/monitoring design can ever be made safe, alongside speculation about attacker motives (Russia, financial markets, prior US military base incident). **Hottest debate:** Whether remote monitoring of industrial refrigeration can ever be done safely (read-only, air-gapped, segmented) or whether any network connectivity inevitably becomes an attack vector. **Open questions** - Who actually carried out the attack and why (state actor, financial motive, copycat of the earlier US military base incident)? - Is this linked to the same-day IT outage at a Dutch supermarket chain? - Why did the defrost/control system allow remote triggering of repeated defrost cycles instead of being restricted to on-site staff? **Highlights** > > This still shouldn't be online. This line suggests the units themselves were targeted individually with a hack: > Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified. But the problem with networked devices spread across tens of thousands of pretty much unguarded locations, surrounded by unvetted employees, but taking orders form a central location is that there is no such thing as "not online". They'll talk to the management server used to set up the nightly defrost schedules across the fleet. Even if they are in an isolated VLAN, it's always one step away from someone connecting a Pi to that network and off they go online. There's only so much zero-trust, NAC/802.1x and segmentation can do when some devices will be too old to support these and their network will be the entry point to the management server, then to the whole fleet. I'm honestly very surprised that a couple of things things haven't happened yet: the central server for managing these fleets getting hacked and allowing access to the entire fleet, and/or the companies realizing that the only way to limit the reach of an attack is to physically not have the hardware needed to do remote control. > — [buran77 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060638) > Like the other poster mentioned, blanket statements like this ignore the incredibly smart people at major international corporations and their strategies. I have a smart fridge and washer. I won't name names. But for several years they were never connected or online at all (unless they was compromised and I didn't know). I connected them and one of the first updates included in the washer was changing the default wash cycle from something like 110 minutes to 46 or something. I don't remember all the values if I'm honest. There are executives who have spreadsheets and charts of how much water that saved per household over varying periods of time. How much it would save with greater adoption. And the unsaid message, or maybe they'll be explicit, of how many people are going to face tragic water supply issues in the future. It's a powerful message, even if we know it's cyncical and calculated to push not just washers, but firmware security systems and institutions to govern those systems. And yes, compromised systems can also be used to build zombie networks to push horrible content. I feel horrible that this critically important surface issue of water supply is used to push other agendas. I honestly wish I could do other work not related to it. > — [jgerrish on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059991) > > Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified. I feel like this is kind of holding the supermarket hostage and saying, “Sure your freezer is working fine, but if you refuse to buy new freezers from us prepare to get hacked.” Sure you can argue that the supermarket should have just taken the old freezers offline. But you can also argue that the manufacturer could have supplied software updates but didn’t in order to force sales of newer models. > — [montjoy on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50061151) > This is pretty interesting as the Danfoss vulnerability was suspected to be related to a similar situation that occurred across US military bases in late August 2026. https://signalandsilence.substack.com/p/i-think-someone-hack... Could this be the same group? Or someone inspired by reading that article? Or just entirely unrelated? > — [bronco21016 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50057741) > Interestingly, a major Dutch supermarket was also hit by a yet-undescribed cyberattack, prompting them to basically shut down every IT system. So not a hack of a control system, sounds more like an ordinary ransomware attack... but still tantalizing that two EU countries have their food supplies targeted the same day... the day of a big NATO "russia we dont mess around" conference, too. > — [isoprophlex on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50059873) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50057551) · 114 points · 76 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [French postal service brought down by cyber attack](https://daily.dev/posts/french-postal-service-brought-down-by-cyber-attack-zptogdfon) · CSO Online · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [France’s postal and banking services disrupted by suspected DDoS attack](https://daily.dev/posts/france-s-postal-and-banking-services-disrupted-by-suspected-ddos-attack-szrjsm90t) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [France’s statistics department hit by cyberattack on staff directory](https://daily.dev/posts/france-s-statistics-department-hit-by-cyberattack-on-staff-directory-jydqpb9vd) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#cyber](https://daily.dev/tags/cyber) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s"},"datePublished":"2026-10-12T17:47:05.182Z","dateModified":"2026-10-12T22:24:46.520Z","description":"Hundreds of French supermarkets, including Coopérative U, Intermarché, Netto, Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc, were hit by a cyber attack that hijacked...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/287e0905daaba80a8359f5454ae7f556?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/287e0905daaba80a8359f5454ae7f556?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"security,cyber","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/fridges-in-french-supermarkets-hit-by-cyber-attack-69llivg2s#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How did hackers cause supermarket fridges in France to overheat?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Hackers gained control of refrigeration management software made by Danish firm Danfoss, which retailers use to remotely regulate cold units, and ordered affected units to heat up to 50C and stay there overnight instead of undergoing a normal brief defrost cycle. 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