Attackers forced French supermarket fridges into defrost via Danfoss controllers
Original title: France's supermarket fridges were vulnerable online for months
IPinfo found 1,331 French Danfoss dashboards online days earlier, 85% running software with known flaws.
On the night of October 11–12, 2026, attackers put refrigeration at hundreds of French supermarkets into defrost mode. Some units reached 50°C, some equipment caught fire, and stores discarded food, according to the Paris prosecutor. Danfoss said most affected gear was legacy AK-SM 800 and AK-SC 355 controllers. CERT-FR reported numerous AK-SM and AK-SC compromises, later adding Copeland and Dixell XWEB supervisors, and said campaigns are probably still ongoing.
Unconfirmed: No one has said who attacked or how they got in; store counts and loss figures come from chains and press reports.
- More than 400 stores were hit, according to Futura-Sciences; losses could reach several million euros.
- Carrefour reported 80 stores; Les Mousquetaires chains more than 300; Coopérative U 80 of 2,000.
- Of 2,528 exposed StoreView dashboards on October 6–7, 1,331 were in France.
- Only 195 French dashboards had every known fix; 527 were unsupported AK-SM 800 units.
- 316 of 1,331 French dashboards were still online on October 14.
Impact: Refrigeration forced into defrost, spoiling food and starting fires
| Product | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
| Danfoss AK-SM 800 | end of life since 2023; Flash-based dashboards | — |
| Danfoss AK-SC 355 | legacy models named by Danfoss | — |
| Danfoss AK-SM 800A | older than firmware 3.3, 4.2, or 4.3.1 miss named fixes | 3.3, 4.2, and 4.3.1 for the respective fixes |
| Copeland XWEB | — | — |
| Dixell XWEB | — | — |
- 1.Disconnect AK-SM, AK-SC, and XWEB controllers or restrict who can reach them.
- 2.Check insurance terms before cutting data sent to refrigeration contractors.
- Organizations
- CERT-FRLes MousquetairesSynacktiv
- Countries
- France
From the original article
9 min read at ipinfo.io
On the night of October 11 to 12, 2026, fridges and freezers in hundreds of French supermarkets started to warm up. Cyber attackers had pushed the refrigeration systems into defrost mode, which heats the cooling parts to melt ice. Some units reached 50°C (122°F), some equipment started to catch fire, according to the Paris prosecutor , and stores threw away their fresh and frozen food .
By emot · ipinfo.io
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