Attackers took remote control of fridges and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets on the night of October 11 and warmed them, forcing stores to throw food away, several retail chains said.

The attackers reached them through the controller that runs all of a store's fridges and freezers, a device made by Danish company Danfoss that maintenance firms can manage remotely. Les Mousquetaires, which owns the Intermarché chain, said its fridges and freezers were put into defrost and heated to as much as 50°C.

CERT-FR, the French government's computer emergency response team, said in an alert published in French on October 12 that it is aware of numerous compromises affecting two Danfoss controller series, the AK-SM and the AK-SC. It told operators to disconnect the controllers or filter access to them.

CERT-FR is part of ANSSI, France's national cybersecurity agency. ANSSI's head, Vincent Strubel, called it urgent to take the two series off the internet or filter access very tightly, AFP reported.

Neither French authorities nor Danfoss has so far said who carried out the attack or how the attackers got into the controllers. Danfoss said most of the units hit were older models that it no longer updates.

The chains gave their own figures to AFP, Reuters and broadcaster RTL. Each counts the stores the attack reached.

A store on that list did not always lose its stock. Schelcher told RTL that the cold chain held in most of the 80 Coopérative U stores hit, and that only a minority could not react fast enough and lost goods, according to AFP .

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