Pentagon investigates freezer malfunctions at US military bases as suspected cyberattacks
The same refrigeration controllers sit in supermarkets, hospitals and data centres, the recommended fixes include changing the default passwords
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An employee cleans freezers that are out of power at an ICA supermarket on Odengatan in Stockholm, on November 2, 2026, after a number of ICA and Coop stores have suffered problems with their refrigerators and freezers overnight. (Photo by Fredrik SANDBERG / TT NEWS AGENCY / AFP via Getty Images) / Sweden OUT
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The Pentagon has been investigating a string of freezer malfunctions at US military bases as suspected cyberattacks, Newsweek reports. The failures occurred in August. A spokesperson for the Army Criminal Investigation Division said it is working with other government agencies and French law enforcement to understand the incidents, in the United States and in Europe.
The European pattern is already familiar. Last month French authorities said refrigeration units at hundreds of supermarkets had been hijacked, causing food losses and fires. Similar sudden temperature increases have been reported in Belgium, Sweden, Ireland, Estonia, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Officials have not identified anyone as responsible.
The equipment at the centre of it is anything but exotic. Sean Tufts, field chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm Claroty, says the same types of refrigeration controllers are used across the food retail industry, and many are reachable through remote connections so technicians can monitor and repair equipment without driving to each store. When those connections are not properly secured, they hand an attacker a direct line to the machinery. The same controllers also serve hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, water utilities and data centres — any organisation handling temperature-sensitive goods sits on the same exposure. An attacker who takes over a controller never needs to touch business software: altering a temperature setting or activating a defrost cycle is enough to ruin stock, as the fires in France demonstrated.
Daniel Ward, an IT and cybersecurity professor at Southern New Hampshire University, says devices of this class were typically not produced with security in mind and do not ordinarily receive updates that fix vulnerabilities. He notes there has been a decade-long effort to raise awareness of device security in manufacturing and critical infrastructure — and that refrigeration manufacturing was simply never part of those discussions.
The countermeasures now being urged on grocery operators read as a list of things the industry had years to do on its own. Tufts advises operators to find out which controllers are connected to the public internet and who can access them, to confirm with third-party contractors that equipment is not unnecessarily exposed, to secure remote access with strong authentication, to review default passwords, to update supported equipment, and to segment critical systems so a hijacked freezer cannot reach anything else. The remote connections exist because they save service companies the cost of site visits; the exposure they create is paid for by whoever owns the thawed stock.
No one has been identified as responsible for the European attacks. The Army's criminal investigators say they are still working to understand the incidents — together with French police.