What: Delhaize confirmed an IT incident affecting the refrigeration and freezer systems of at least forty Belgian supermarkets, following the October attack on French stores and the recent outage at its parent company Ahold Delhaize.

Why it is important: Refrigeration controls sit outside the usual IT perimeter, and the French attacks exploited obsolete units that no longer received security updates, a risk shared by any retailer with food halls or connected store equipment.

Delhaize confirmed to the Belgian outlets HLN and VTM Nieuws that an IT incident occurred involving the refrigeration and freezer systems in some of its supermarkets. The hack reportedly affected the refrigerated and frozen food display cases of stores located in both Flanders and Wallonia, and the reported count is a minimum. RetailDetail states that no further information is available yet.

The news recalls the large-scale cyberattack on refrigerated display cases in French supermarkets in October, when hackers manipulated the electronic controls of refrigeration and freezer systems and at least 350 stores were affected. The damage from that attack amounted to tens of millions.

Ahold Delhaize, Delhaize's parent company, has only recently recovered from a major cyberattack in which many of its services were shut down for more than a week as a precaution. RetailDetail draws the link to the French case by comparison only and reports no confirmed connection between the incidents.

IADS Notes: The attacks of 12 October targeted obsolete Danfoss refrigeration controllers and spoiled stock across about 400 French supermarkets, while Ahold Delhaize took systems offline across five US banners and European services including Albert Heijn (The Robin Report, October 2026). A wider tally puts the number of French shops with remotely hijacked refrigeration controls above 500, and the websites and apps of Ahold Delhaize's US banners stayed down for at least eight days even though stores remained open (IADS, October 2026). Continuity then depends on a fallback that works in practice: Magasin du Nord kept all its stores and its webshop open by trading partly by hand after unauthorised activity on 18 October, in a market where only 5% of surveyed companies say they could largely run core activities without central IT (Magasin du Nord, October 2026). The price of lacking one is visible at Marks and Spencer, which forecast a return to profit growth only after investing in technological resilience following its attack (Financial Times, May 2026).

Delhaize refrigeration systems hit by IT incident in at least forty Belgian stores