Attacks on supermarket refrigeration reach Portugal and are under investigation in Romania

Seven Intermarché supermarkets in Portugal suffered a cyberattack that affected their refrigeration systems, according to EFE. Grupo Mosqueteiros, which owns the chain, confirmed this in a statement sent on Monday, November 2, to the public broadcaster RTP, in which it says the attack targeted an external supplier that manages that refrigeration. The company says supplies have not been affected and that hygiene and food safety conditions are guaranteed.

According to the Portuguese Association of Distribution Companies (APED), cited by EFE, three of the seven stores recorded product losses; all of them remained open, and neither their locations nor the cost has been disclosed. The Judicial Police said it was aware of the incident and was monitoring it with the National Cybersecurity Centre, without confirming that it was malicious.

In Romania, the National Cyber Security Directorate (DNSC) is investigating temperature rises at six supermarkets of the same chain as a possible cyberattack, according to EFE. Its director, Dan Cîmpean, told the newspaper Libertatea that the refrigerator controllers were directly accessible from the internet and ran fairly old software.

The European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, expressed concern at the repeated attacks and described them as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain, according to EFE. The Mexican newspaper Peninsular Digital puts the number of countries with incidents at nine (Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden) and mentions problems at 13 SuperValu stores in Ireland and at least five Coop stores in Italy; it has not been possible to verify these figures with the chains.

No one has claimed the attacks, according to Peninsular Digital. It is still not known who is behind them, whether all the cases have the same origin or which maintenance provider was compromised in each country.