Russian hacker groups NoName057 and Z-Pentest claimed responsibility for the wave of cyberattacks targeting supermarket and commercial refrigeration systems across Europe. Both groups are tied to the pro-Russian hacktivist network Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, which has been associated with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Before the claim, officials had offered differing assessments of the perpetrators, with UK National Cyber Security Centre chief Richard Horne saying the culprits “might be states, might be criminals” and Romania’s cyber chief describing the operation as “semi-amateurish.”
The campaign across 15 European countries included an overnight breach between Nov 1 and Nov 2 at Coolworld, a contractor for the French Blood Establishment, where hackers reprogrammed freezers holding donor blood samples and transfusion plasma in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region from -30C to 110C, Le Canard Enchaine reported. An on-call technician detected the temperature rise and the French Health Ministry confirmed no blood products were damaged. In the retail sector, the attacks hit roughly 75 stores in Belgium across Delhaize, Carrefour, Spar and Ikea, as well as 23 ICA and seven Coop stores in Sweden alongside an Axfood warehouse that lost about $300,000 in food.