What happened
On the night of 11 to 12 October 2026, attackers pushed refrigerators and freezers in supermarkets to dangerously high temperatures. The focus was France, but retailers in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain were also hit. Reported store counts range from about 350 to 700.
The trick was simple: the defrost function ran continuously. According to reports, some units were set to as high as 50 °C.
Why it worked
According to CERT-FR, affected units belonged to the Danfoss AK-SM and AK-SC product lines, with management interfaces directly reachable from the internet. Danfoss said most affected systems were older products that no longer receive software or security updates.
What this means for your plant
Building services, refrigeration, compressed air, EV charging: every site has controllers nobody thinks of as IT, yet they are networked. Many will never receive another update. Replacing them is often expensive, so they need to be protected another way.
Four measures for unpatchable devices
- Get off the internet. Use an external scan to check which of your addresses expose web interfaces. Remote access only via VPN or jump host.
- Own segment. Put legacy devices in a zone that may only talk to exactly the systems they need.
- Watch setpoints. A rule that alerts when temperature or pressure setpoints change outside working hours costs little and would have saved hours here.
- Plan replacement. A list of all devices without vendor support, with a date and budget for replacement.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
