Irish supermarket SuperValu hit in suspected cyber attack

03 Nov 2026, 10:53 · IrishCentral

Musgrave, which owns SuperValu, said the incident is limited to a specific model of refrigeration, adding that its monitoring systems sounded the alarm on the issue.

It is likely that the frozen food having to be binned as a safety precaution will cost thousands of euros.

Stores in Lucan, Blanchardstown and Ranelagh in Dublin, along with one outlet in Co. Waterford, were among those impacted – while the SuperValu in Bray, Co. Wicklow, did not open on time yesterday as staff worked to deal with the issue.

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A Musgrave spokeswoman said that following the immediate action taken thanks to its monitoring systems alerting staff, at-risk chilled and frozen products in the affected stores were removed from sale, and all other products are on sale as normal.

Musgrave said customer safety is its first priority, and that customers could be confident that products on sale in its stores had been stored at safe temperatures.

The incident was fully resolved by yesterday afternoon, and investigations are ongoing into what caused the suspected hack.

"Musgrave can confirm that the cyber incident which affected refrigeration systems in 13 SuperValu stores has been fully resolved, and all stores are now operating as normal," the spokeswoman said.

"Replenishment of chilled and frozen ranges in the affected stores is well underway, and we are working to ensure customers can get everything they need as quickly as possible. We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding."

Meanwhile, dozens of supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg owned by the Ahold Delhaize brand, as well as six stores in Sweden’s Coop chain, were subject to a similar ‘IT incident’ that targeted fridges and freezers yesterday.

French supermarket chains were hit by a cyber attack last month that caused their refrigerators to shoot up in temperature in hundreds of stores, with one chief executive describing the hack as ‘unprecedented’.

Rises in refrigerator temperature were also reported in yesterday’s attack on supermarkets across Europe,

Utz Roedig, professor of computer science at University College Cork, said yesterday that the motive behind the cyber attacks on SuperValu and across Europe remains unclear.

He said: "The majority of our computers are not PCs, they are small, embedded devices that surround us.

"When we think about cyber attacks, we always think about PCs, but we forget all the little gadgets that we rely on to function.

"That includes fridges that can be controlled via the internet. These computers are used for industrial control, building management, smart homes, transport systems, energy systems, hospital infrastructure and much more."

He continued: "Often, we describe these as critical infrastructure and it is important we secure these. In this type of attack, the attacker does usually not have a direct financial benefit. In this case, the attacker tries to create disruption to our everyday life; so we see our shopping for food is disrupted."

He said that the motive "is unclear and unknown", adding: "It could just be a case that someone might do this just because they can; however, it could also hypothetically be a state actor that wants to cause disruption to another country. The technical details of what happened have yet to become clear, so it is difficult to say exactly what happened in this instance.

"However, usually this kind of refrigeration infrastructure is automated so you can monitor and control it centrally, the idea being to ensure product safety. But if an attacker takes over the IT system at the center of the monitoring, they can also control the linked fridges and manipulate the cooling setpoint."

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* This article was originally published on BusinessPlus.ie.

Irish supermarket SuperValu hit in suspected cyber attack

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