French Investigators Are Hunting the Hackers Who Took Over Supermarket Fridges, With No Ransom Demand

13 Oct 2026, 14:49 by Jerome London · Thought Catalog

REUTERS/Lucien Libert

Updated 4 minutes ago, October 13, 2026

At least 350 supermarkets across France had the temperatures inside their fridges manually overridden this week, including stores from Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarche and Cooperative U. By Tuesday, staff at some Paris locations were dumping boxes of spoiled meat and frozen goods into giant trash containers.

Outside a Paris Intermarché, a worker loads boxes of spoiled food on October 13, 2026, a day after hackers remotely overrode refrigeration systems at supermarket chains across France. Photo by Lucien Libert / Reuters.

What puzzles investigators is the silence. No hacktivist group has claimed credit, and no cybercriminal has demanded a ransom, which is unusual since such groups normally rush to monetize a hack or claim it for political reasons, according to a source with knowledge of the probe.

Spoiled food piles up outside a Paris Intermarché the morning after hackers remotely overrode refrigeration systems at French supermarket chains, October 13, 2026. Photo by Lucien Libert / Reuters.

Three cyber experts told Reuters the attack looks like it was easy to pull off. The affected fridges ran on software from Danish firm Danfoss, and on Monday the company said many of the units had “reached end of life and no longer receive software or security updates” or were “running outdated firmware.”

Outside a Paris Intermarché on October 13, 2026, workers haul boxes of spoiled food after a cyberattack crippled refrigeration systems at hundreds of French supermarkets. Photo by Lucien Libert / Reuters.

The weaknesses were no secret. On August 9, cybersecurity firm Claroty detailed flaws in a Danfoss controller, since patched, that could let intruders bypass authentication and run code on compromised devices.

A frozen food aisle sits shuttered at a supermarket outside Nantes on October 12, 2026, after a cyberattack crippled refrigeration systems at chains across France. Photo by Stephane Mahe / Reuters.

“This is about basic cyber hygiene,” said Ken Munro, a partner at British cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners. “Get it wrong and you get a smelly mess of defrosted food.” He suspects the culprits could be “kids messing around,” noting that a nation state would have no reason to hit only a subset of French fridges.

Empty refrigerator cases line the frozen food aisle of a Paris Intermarché on October 13, 2026, a handwritten sign warning shoppers that the store’s refrigeration system had been compromised by a hack. Photo by Lucien Libert / Reuters.

The exposure is far from fixed. Using the scanning service Shodan, Reuters found at least 4,500 Danfoss interfaces still viewable online on Tuesday, and French scanning company Onyphe said only a small minority appeared to be running the latest software.

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