What: Freezers at dozens of Ica and Coop supermarkets in Sweden and at Ahold Delhaize, Carrefour and Spar stores in Belgium overheated to as high as 55C on 2 November, weeks after similar attacks on French supermarkets.

Why it is important: The attacks have moved from France to Sweden and Belgium within weeks. The same refrigeration software is now a shared exposure for grocers across several European markets, not a single retailer's problem.

Freezers at dozens of supermarkets in Sweden and Belgium overheated, ruining food worth millions of euros. Company statements named six Coop stores and at least four Ica shops in Sweden. In Belgium, local media reported about 40 Delhaize shops, 15 Carrefour shops and five Spar shops. The head of an Ica shop in Sjöbo said staff could not adjust the temperatures while hot air blew into the freezers, destroying food worth hundreds of thousands of Swedish krona.

The incidents follow attacks on hundreds of French supermarkets last month, when one fridge reached 80C. The Paris public prosecutor's cyber crime unit and Anssi, the French cyber security agency, are investigating those attacks.

Many of the affected fridges and freezers ran software by Danfoss, the Danish industrial group. Researchers at Claroty reported multiple vulnerabilities in Danfoss systems in August, which the group fixed. Danfoss said last month that the affected fridge systems no longer received security updates and ran outdated firmware. Ahold said it was aware of an IT incident affecting refrigeration systems in a number of Delhaize stores and was assessing the situation. Experts have warned that poor IT security and outdated software expose critical infrastructure to such attacks.

IADS Notes: In October, attacks on obsolete Danfoss refrigeration controllers spoiled stock across about 400 French supermarkets, after Claroty had published flaws in the controller model in August (The Robin Report, October 2026). A wider tally puts the number of French shops with remotely hijacked refrigeration controls above 500, while the websites and apps of Ahold Delhaize's US banners stayed down for at least eight days even though stores remained open, and exploitation of disclosed flaws now follows within days (IADS, October 2026). Exposure also runs beyond the first tier of suppliers: a breach at a global logistics provider disrupted warehouse operations across Europe, while most vendor risk programmes stop at direct suppliers (RH-ISAC, August 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, 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).

Freezers overheat at Swedish and Belgian supermarkets weeks after French cyber attack