“Cyberattack on cooling systems 95% certain to be Russian sabotage”

According to cyber experts, it is virtually certain that the hackers who attacked the refrigeration systems of dozens of European supermarkets on Sunday night were backed by the Kremlin. The European Commission held two crisis meetings on Tuesday.

Perpetrators remain unknown

The cyberattack, in which the defrost function of refrigerators and freezers in dozens of European supermarkets was remotely manipulated, bears all the hallmarks of previous sabotage campaigns linked to Russia, just like the earlier hack in France, experts say. “We can never be 100 percent certain without an official intelligence report, but we estimate the likelihood that a Kremlin-backed group is behind the attack at about 95 percent,” Xavier Bellekens, CEO of the Scottish cybersecurity firm Lupovis, told the Belgian newspaper HLN.

His company had previously observed the same infrastructure and overlapping IP addresses in sabotage operations linked to the Russian government. Other observers also cite this as a likely scenario. However, because no malware was used, it is virtually impossible to identify the perpetrators.

“Not isolated incidents”

The European Commission is also taking the matter seriously and held two crisis meetings on Tuesday morning to exchange information and discuss a response. The first meeting was attended by, among others, departments of the Commission, the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), and the law enforcement agency Europol. The European network of national experts responsible for responding to cybercrises also held consultations. “These are not isolated incidents,” said a spokesperson in Brussels. The EU must be resilient and prepared for cyberattacks of this kind.

The cyberattack struck supermarkets in at least twelve countries overnight from Sunday to Monday: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, and Portugal. In Belgium, 76 stores were affected; in the Netherlands, 17; and in other countries, the numbers were reportedly lower.

“Access to food was never compromised”

“Despite the scale of the attack, the number of affected stores is small in relation to the total number of food retail shops, access to food was therefore never compromised,” says Independent Retail Europe, the European trade association for independent food retailers. “Consumers always had access to other food retail stores in their area..”

Nevertheless, these incidents must serve as a wake-up call for the entire food supply chain: cyber-attacks are no longer limited to data theft and ransomware. “Safeguarding the resilience of Europe’s food supply also requires protecting the technologies and infrastructure on which retailers depend to safely store, distribute and provide food to consumers.”