Hackers raised the temperatures of refrigeration systems at supermarkets in Germany, Romania and the United Kingdom during Monday’s cyberattacks, officials said, bringing the number of European countries affected in the hacking spree to at least 11. The announcements on Tuesday came as the European Union promised a collective response, warning that the attacks, which have spoiled tonnes of food across the continent, were “not isolated”. The motive for the cyberattacks is unknown, and no one has claimed responsibility.
A Romanian official said he did not suspect a state actor. Problems were reported in at least nine EU countries on Monday: Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. On Tuesday, officials and company representatives said four supermarkets in Germany and six in Romania were affected.
The UK, which is not in the EU, was also hit. Thomas Regnier, a spokesperson for the EU, said the bloc’s agencies were talking with national authorities to develop a joint response. But he refused to point the finger at any potential culprits.
Romania’s top cybersecurity official played down the threat. Belgium was among the hardest-hit countries on Monday, with dozens of stores across several grocery chains reporting refrigeration failures. Federal prosecutors there have opened an investigation.
In Italy, about 20 supermarkets were affected. Giuseppe Spadaro, director of a group that runs Coop supermarkets in Sicily, said four of its 300 stores were hit, causing thousands of euros in damage. The shelves are empty,” he told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Italy’s government held talks with the heads of the intelligence services and the National Cybersecurity Agency on Tuesday after the attacks, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said the incident had a “limited” impact. In the UK, hackers tried to target small meat-processing firms, but the impact was minimal, said Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Horne told the BBC the issue affected “the whole food supply chain”, and that there had been a couple of instances where “vulnerable technology had been exploited”.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
