EU urges action as Germany, Romania and UK report supermarket cyberattacks

EU says supermarket hacks in 11 countries are ‘not isolated’, but a Romanian official says he suspects no state actor.

Employees throw away food outside the ICA Kvantum supermarket in Sjobo, Sweden, on November 2, 2026, after a hacker attack raised the temperature in its freezers to 50C [Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency via AFP]

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”.

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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.

“These are not isolated incidents, and of course, we have to be collectively resilient and prepared for such cyber incidents,” he said.

But he refused to point the finger at any potential culprits.

Romania’s top cybersecurity official played down the threat.

“It seems semi-amateurish,” Dan Cimpean, the director of Romania’s National Cyber Security Directorate, told the AFP news agency. “We do not suspect, under any circumstances, that it is a state actor.”

He added that “no other infrastructure was compromised”.

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.

“We had to throw away everything. 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.

“There is no cause for alarm, although all the relevant institutional bodies remain on high alert,” it said in a statement.

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”.

The second wave of attacks mirrored the cyberattack that swept hundreds of supermarkets across France in October, which also affected stores in several other European countries.

In Sweden, the supermarket chain Coop said that refrigerators and freezers affected overnight at seven of its stores had been connected to “old 4G networks”, and that the stores had since resumed normal operations.

Carlos Cancinos, a spokesperson for the chain, said Coop had accelerated an upgrade, begun after the October attacks, to move its connected refrigeration equipment onto 5G networks and modern modems.

“This helps to solve a large share of problems of this kind,” he said.

Danfoss, a Danish maker of refrigeration controls whose systems were again among those targeted, said it had been in close contact with customers for the past three weeks. It recommended that the systems not be directly accessible from the internet.

Frank Groenewegen, a cybersecurity expert at Deloitte in The Hague, urged retailers to check whether their refrigeration controllers were connected to the internet and running the latest security updates.

“And if they don’t even know, then remove them from the public internet immediately,” he told the Reuters news agency. “With disconnecting, you haven’t fixed the root cause, but you’ve at least isolated those systems so that an attacker is not able to do this anymore.”

欧盟称11个国家的超市黑客事件“并非孤立事件”，但一名罗马尼亚官员表示，他不怀疑有任何国家行为体参与其中。

2026年11月2日，在瑞典舍博市，ICA Kvantum超市遭到黑客攻击，导致冷冻柜温度升至50摄氏度，员工们在超市外丢弃食物。[Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency via AFP]

官员称，周一的网络攻击中，黑客提高了德国、罗马尼亚和英国超市的制冷系统温度，使得此次黑客攻击事件中受影响的欧洲国家数量至少达到 11 个。

周二的这些声明发布之际，欧盟承诺将采取集体应对措施，并警告称，这些袭击事件已经导致整个欧洲大陆数吨食物变质，“并非孤立事件”。

巴勒斯坦行动组织在全球的影响力日益增长，尽管遭到镇压和英国禁令，但其影响力仍在扩大（列表 1/3）。

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网络攻击的动机不明，也无人声称对此负责。一位罗马尼亚官员表示，他不怀疑是国家行为体所为。

周一，至少有九个欧盟国家报告了相关问题：比利时、爱沙尼亚、芬兰、爱尔兰、意大利、卢森堡、荷兰、葡萄牙和瑞典。周二，官员和公司代表表示，德国有四家超市，罗马尼亚有六家超市受到影响。

英国并非欧盟成员国，也受到了冲击。

欧盟发言人托马斯·雷尼尔表示，欧盟各机构正在与各国当局进行磋商，以制定联合应对措施。

“这些并非孤立事件，当然，我们必须集体提高应对此类网络安全事件的韧性并做好准备，”他说。

但他拒绝指认任何潜在的罪魁祸首。

罗马尼亚最高网络安全官员淡化了这一威胁。

罗马尼亚国家网络安全局局长丹·辛佩安告诉法新社：“这看起来像是半业余的举动。我们绝不怀疑这是国家行为体所为。”

他还补充说，“其他基础设施没有受到损害”。

周一，比利时是受灾最严重的国家之一，多家连锁超市的数十家门店报告冷藏设备故障。比利时联邦检察官已展开调查。

意大利约有20家超市受到影响。

西西里岛 Coop 超市集团的负责人朱塞佩·斯帕达罗表示，该集团旗下 300 家门店中有 4 家遭到袭击，造成数千欧元的损失。

“我们不得不把所有东西都扔掉。货架空空如也，”他告诉意大利《晚邮报》。

袭击发生后，意大利政府于周二与情报部门负责人和国家网络安全局举行了会谈。总理乔治亚·梅洛尼的办公室表示，该事件的影响“有限”。

“虽然所有相关机构仍保持高度戒备，但目前无需恐慌。”声明中说。

英国国家网络安全中心 (NCSC) 首席执行官理查德·霍恩表示，在英国，黑客曾试图攻击小型肉类加工企业，但影响甚微。

霍恩告诉 BBC，这个问题影响了“整个食品供应链”，并且已经发生过几起“易受攻击的技术被利用”的事件。

第二波攻击与 10 月份席卷法国数百家超市的网络攻击如出一辙，那次攻击也影响了其他几个欧洲国家的商店。

瑞典连锁超市 Coop 表示，其七家门店一夜之间受影响的冰箱和冰柜都连接到了“旧的 4G 网络”，目前这些门店已恢复正常运营。

该连锁店发言人卡洛斯·坎西诺斯表示，Coop 加快了在 10 月份袭击事件后开始的升级进程，将其联网制冷设备迁移到 5G 网络和现代调制解调器上。

“这有助于解决这类问题中的很大一部分，”他说。

丹麦制冷控制系统制造商丹佛斯（Danfoss）的系统再次成为攻击目标之一。该公司表示，过去三周一直与客户保持密切联系，并建议客户不要通过互联网直接访问这些系统。

德勤海牙分公司的网络安全专家弗兰克·格罗内韦根敦促零售商检查其制冷控制器是否已连接到互联网并运行最新的安全更新。

“如果他们甚至不知道，那就立即将它们从公共互联网上移除，”他告诉路透社。“断开连接虽然不能解决根本问题，但至少可以隔离这些系统，使攻击者无法再这样做。”