Isophoric News · Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Supermarket fridges and freezers in Belgium and six other European countries hit by suspected cyberattacks
Supermarket chains in at least seven European countries said fridge and freezer temperatures in some of their shops rose overnight into Monday, Nov. 2, as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 F), and several confirmed they had been hacked, the Guardian reported. In Belgium, Ahold Delhaize said dozens of its supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were hit, and Belgium's Centre for Cybersecurity confirmed it was aware of an incident targeting supermarket refrigeration systems, Euronews reported. The incidents followed an attack in France last month in which hackers took control of cooling units in as many as 700 supermarkets, according to the Guardian. Carrefour Belgium reported disruption in about 15 of its 700 shops, and Colruyt and Intermarché said technical problems affected fridges in five and 15 shops, the Guardian reported. The chief executive of Sabcobel, which runs Delhaize's refrigeration systems, told the Belga news agency it was a cyberattack that switched the units to defrost mode. The other countries named were Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden, and EU food commissioner Christophe Hansen called the attacks "a deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain," the Guardian reported.
