Hackers Turned Supermarket Freezers to 50°C in Belgium and Sweden

By Sophie Lindqvist

Hackers remotely set supermarket freezers to 50 degrees Celsius in Belgium and Sweden, destroying food stocks in the second such attack in weeks, Bloomberg reports. The intrusions hit stores owned by Dutch retail group Ahold Delhaize plus ICA and Coop locations in Sweden. The method matched the earlier French attack exactly: the built-in defrost mode was activated remotely, with both temperature and defrost duration overridden.

The damage is likely in the millions of dollars. Nobody has published a firm figure yet. Staff photographs from Sweden show shopping carts full of spoiled goods heading to disposal.

Where did the attacks strike?

In Belgium, the attack began at approximately midnight on Sunday, according to Belga News Agency. Sabcobel, a regional refrigeration fitter, estimates at least twenty units are affected nationwide. The affected chains include Delhaize, Carrefour, and Spar.

In Sweden, Aftonbladet reports that refrigerators and freezers have been struck in several ICA and Coop stores. Ica Kvantum wrote on Facebook: "We are extremely sad and working hard to get everything back up and running." Images from the scene show staff discarding cartloads of food.

The attacks follow an earlier incident in France, described at the time as unprecedented, in which supermarket fridges were hacked and foodstuffs destroyed.

What is the fix?

Sabcobel CEO Stephan Moelans said the company has been working "very hard" to protect its fridges against the vulnerability. Physical modifications to the units are still required, he said. That admission carries weight. Software patches alone will not close this gap.

The company says the simplest interim solution is switching units to a secure internet connection. Most of its customers adopted that measure after the France attack. The Belgium and Sweden intrusions happened anyway, which raises the question of whether the fix was applied everywhere, or whether it is insufficient.

"We've been working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network," Moelans said, according to the report. Disconnecting is containment, not repair.

Is this part of a wider pattern?

Two things stand out. First, the attacks show how many basic functions of society now depend on internet connectivity, and how exposed that dependency leaves them. A freezer with a network interface is a freezer that can be told to defrost.

Second, the source links the rise of cyber intrusions into physical systems to the spread of AI agents. In October, a hacker suspected of using AI agents stole data belonging to 25,000 customers from banks in South Korea. Officials commented then that AI models let actors "hack with ease even without specialized skills."

That claim deserves scrutiny. No evidence in the reporting ties AI tools to the freezer attacks specifically. The South Korean case is the only cited example, and suspicion is not attribution. What is confirmed is the repetition: two coordinated attacks on connected refrigeration, weeks apart, on the same continent, using the same technique.

What happens next?

Retailers now face a choice between retrofitting hardware and isolating refrigeration from networks entirely, and Moelans has already said the physical route is necessary. Until those modifications are complete, every connected freezer in Europe remains a target that can be destroyed with a few commands, and the next attack will test whether this round of fixes holds.