New cyber attack hits supermarket refrigerators in Europe
Ahold Delhaize, Colruyt, ICA and Coop report temperature spikes in stores, and one case repeats the attack pattern recorded in France last month.
BY THE X-TRADER NEWS NEWSROOM · REPORTING FROM INFOMONEY · 2 MIN
In the early hours of Monday (2/11), an IT incident affected refrigerators and freezers in dozens of Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt stores in Belgium and Luxembourg. The information comes from Reuters, in a dispatch from Stockholm and Brussels, according to InfoMoney, which also published the case.
The pattern was repeated in Sweden. According to the same report, the ICA and Coop chains recorded similar temperature spikes in their stores. One of the stores attributed the failure to a cyber attack, but the dispatches do not identify who was responsible.
The case gains weight because it recalls a previous episode. Last month, French police said hackers had taken control of refrigeration systems in hundreds of supermarkets. In this attack, temperatures reached 50°C, with fires and food losses recorded.
There is yet another fact. Ahold reported a cybersecurity incident to Dutch police last month after detecting suspicious activity on its infrastructure. The orders do not establish a link between this report and the refrigeration problems.
What is at stake goes beyond stock. The cold chain is a central part of a supermarket's operation, and a simultaneous failure in several stores turns an IT problem into a physical loss of merchandise, with a risk to food safety and replacement costs. As the available investigation does not provide figures on losses, the size of the impact remains unknown.
What changes for the investor
For those investing in food retail, the episode places cybersecurity at the center of operational analysis. Inventory losses, contingency costs and possible insurance expenses are items that may appear in balance sheets and communications from the networks mentioned, but the available facts do not allow estimating values. What is worth monitoring is whether the companies detail the problem, quantify the losses and explain the measures adopted. This article does not provide a purchase or sale recommendation and does not project quotations.
Automatically translated from Portuguese.
