After Danfoss, hackers strike other refrigeration systems used in France

The cyberattacks targeting French supermarket refrigeration equipment have not stopped. Twenty-four hours after an initial offensive that disabled systems in several hundred stores operated by Danfoss technology, stores equipped with equipment from another company, Dixell, were hit by a similar operation on Monday night.

Damien Deudon, a refrigeration specialist based in Gironde, told Le Monde that a supermarket in the Bordeaux area equipped with Dixell technology – he did not wish to name the store – was attacked during the night. Around 4 am, monitoring systems detected an abnormal spike in temperature. Store teams and specialists, dispatched to the scene, managed to thwart the attackers, and no goods had to be thrown away.

"They changed all the defrost and temperature regulation settings: For the frozen goods, instead of -22 degrees, they set it to 150 degrees," explained the refrigeration specialist, who had advised his customers to be extra vigilant after the day's attack on Danfoss systems. He believed the operation appeared automated: The hackers "were changing two or three settings per second" on the refrigeration equipment, much faster than any human could. "I've been a refrigeration specialist for 25 years, and this is the first time this has happened to me," he said.