US warns of ongoing cyber threat to industrial freezers and cold storage

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Five US federal agencies issued a formal warning on Thursday about hackers targeting industrial refrigeration systems, telling every organization that depends on cold storage to assume it is a target. CISA, the FBI and the departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Transportation jointly described malicious activity against unpatched, internet-accessible temperature and commercial refrigeration controllers — devices widely used across healthcare, chemicals, food and agriculture, and transport.

Successful attacks let hackers alter temperatures or force units into continuous heating and defrost cycles, with inventory loss, equipment damage and fire hazards among the consequences. "Every organization that depends on refrigeration and monitoring systems should assume it could be a target," said CISA's acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity, Chris Butera.

The advisory follows a week in which the same class of device failed across European supermarkets. In Stockholm, an ICA store manager found freezers at 50 degrees Celsius after an overnight attack that went undetected for hours. Irish wholesaler Musgrave removed chilled and frozen products from 13 SuperValu stores; Delhaize, Colruyt and Carrefour reported impacts in Belgium and Luxembourg; a Selver supermarket in Estonia was hit the same night. France's finance minister, Roland Lescure, said roughly 700 of the country's 10,000 supermarkets were affected in a wave last month, with one chain estimating losses in the tens of millions of euros from a single day's disruption — a disruption he called a wake-up call for food security.

The agencies recommended that operators take control systems off the public internet, change default and weak passwords, apply available patches, replace unsupported legacy devices, and limit or secure any remote access. FBI cyber branch operations director Brett Leatherman said the systems are being targeted across critical infrastructure sectors globally because they protect food and medicine. US officials did not attribute the European incidents to any group and did not confirm whether similar attacks have been detected inside the United States.

A separate attack raised temperatures in cold rooms at three sites of France's public blood service; its alarms allowed a rapid response and nothing was lost. In Stockholm the attack ran undetected for hours, and the freezers read 50 degrees by the time anyone looked.