Israel’s National Cyber Directorate (INCD) has issued a cybersecurity alert to domestic retailers, food businesses and logistics facilities following a series of European attacks in which hackers manipulated refrigeration systems.

The European incidents involved cybercriminals remotely altering temperature controls at dozens of supermarkets, causing refrigerators and freezers to warm significantly. The disruptions resulted in extensive food spoilage, substantial economic damage, equipment failures and, in certain cases, fires.

Among the affected businesses were supermarket operators Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt in Belgium and Luxembourg, Swedish grocery chains ICA and Coop, as well as at least one IKEA location.

The Israeli directorate called on retail companies to examine their refrigeration infrastructure and related control systems, particularly equipment that permits remote connections by maintenance personnel and outside service providers.

Companies were also instructed to submit their inspection findings to the directorate and explain which security improvements they have implemented.

‘Everything is destroyed’

The INCD outlined several recommended security measures, including disconnecting refrigeration controls from direct internet exposure, replacing factory-set passwords, installing system updates, protecting remote connections with multi-factor authentication and establishing separate monitoring systems capable of identifying abnormal temperature fluctuations.

“Everything is destroyed,” Engla Ingwall, sales manager at an ICA franchise supermarket in Stockholm, told Reuters while visiting the location on Monday. She said the incident began around 2 a.m. but was discovered only several hours afterward.

“There has been a cyberattack and all our freezers reached 50 degrees [Celsius].”

A representative of privately owned ICA confirmed that the company was aware of an overnight incident affecting refrigeration equipment at a “limited number of stores.”