The European Union’s cybersecurity chief urged the bloc to increase cyber defense spending and warned that routers and consumer electronics could be targeted next after a wave of hacks disabled commercial refrigeration systems across Europe. “Today it was fridges, tomorrow it could be routers, the day after tomorrow it could be home appliances,” the official told AFP on Tuesday, as the FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint alert urging operators to secure cooling systems at supermarkets, blood banks and military facilities.
Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin separately warned of further cyber incidents in the coming months, stating that the Nov 2 attacks on grocery stores required no advanced tools and relied on unupdated passwords. Bohlin added that Russia, China and Iran are showing signs of cooperating to target systems that run power, water and heating, though Swedish authorities have not determined whether a single actor carried out the refrigeration hacks.
The European campaign remotely switched internet-exposed Danfoss and Dixell controllers into defrost mode and raised supermarket freezer temperatures as high as 50°C across more than a dozen countries, spoiling millions of euros worth of food. Attackers also breached contractor Coolworld on Nov 2 to reprogram plasma freezers at three French Blood Establishment sites from -30°C toward 110°C, though alarms alerted staff before any blood products were lost. Pro-Russian hacktivist groups NoName057 and Z-Pentest claimed credit for the wave, while French and German intelligence authorities continue to investigate.