Cyber hackers could target home appliances next after commercial refrigerators and freezers were breached in hundreds of supermarkets last month, an EU chief has warned.
Executive director of the EU’s cybersecurity agency Juhan Lepassaar said on Tuesday anything from routers to home appliances could be hit as he warned that ‘security should not be an afterthought’.
The hacks which struck supermarkets in October were among the most disruptive cyberattacks in 2026, which have included the targeting of Los Angeles‘ transit system in March and US water treatments in July.
Only yesterday, French officials accused Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards of orchestrating the attacks – and warned that there will be consequences, 10 months after the Iran-US war broke out.
Speaking in Brussels as he unveiled a report on the state of the European Union‘s cybersecurity, Mr Lepassaar said: ‘Security should not and cannot be an afterthought.
‘Today it was fridges, tomorrow it could be routers, the day after tomorrow it could be home appliances and so forth’
He added: ‘All incidents can be avoided, but the question is, are we ready to invest to make it happen? Cybersecurity is not cheap.’
‘Every single service that you are depending on as a citizen, as a human being, contains a layer whereby there is a digital element in it, a piece of code which, if not protected, can be hacked.’
The attackers programmed refrigeration systems to blow hot air at 50C in October, causing temperatures inside the fridges to reach 36C, meaning a huge quantity of produce had to be thrown away
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot (pictured) said on Monday that an Iranian ambassador has been summoned to his country’s Foreign Ministry
Mr Lepassaar refused to comment directly on French claims that Iran had been behind the fridge attack, but said Chinese, Iranian, North Korean and Russian ‘state-aligned actors’ have been known to target Europe.
The October 11 cyber attack, which overrode the temperature controls on commercial fridges in hundreds of establishments, appeared to have been easy to pull off, experts previously told Reuters.
The firm behind many of the stricken units said that several were obsolete or running outdated firmware, which could have made it easy for hackers to break in.
Effects were, however, still dramatic. Some refrigerators had the temperature turned up so high they caught fire.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the cyber attack showed a methodology characteristic of the ‘Shahid Kaveh Group’, an elite offensive cyber unit believed to work in the service of the IRGC.
An investigation into the fridge hacks also showed the use of Farsi, and IP addresses pointed to devices located in Iran.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday that an Iranian ambassador has been summoned to his country’s Foreign Ministry.
Mr Barrot also threatened further EU sanctions against Iran, saying ‘there will be consequences’ following the attack.
It came after Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not return messages seeking comment and Tehran routinely denies carrying out malicious cyber operations.
Speaking after a G7 ministerial in Paris, Mr Barrot said that an investigation was still underway.
In the hours following the hack, supermarket employees carted boxes full of perished meat and melted ice cream into giant trash containers.
The attack’s total costs could add up to tens of millions of euros nationwide, one French supermarket owner estimated.
The hacks were followed this month by a second wave that hit more than 100 establishments across Europe and even affected refrigerators used by French blood banks, prompting employees there to have to move some of the blood to different cold storage units.
The sabotage of European supermarket fridges was preceded by at least one similar incident in the United States.
In August, refrigerators in at least half a dozen military commissaries went out of commission.
Pentagon investigators are treating the malfunctions as a suspected cyber attack and have been working with French officials to get to the bottom of what happened.
A person familiar with the matter said that the Pentagon considers Iran a suspect in the August commissary hacks but that the investigation is still in progress.
The Pentagon said on Monday that it is ‘aware of speculation regarding a potential cyber incident’ but that military investigators were on the case and it could not offer further comment for security reasons.
In France, the attackers programmed refrigeration systems to blow hot air at 50C causing temperatures inside the fridges to reach 36C, meaning a huge quantity of produce had to be thrown away.
The hack targeted thousands of refrigeration units across more than 700 retailers in France.
Stores belonging to Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarche and Cooperative U were among those attacked when attackers manually overrode fridge temperatures.
Dominique Schelcher, chief executive of Cooperative U, described the attack as ‘unprecedented’.
He said: ‘Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is extremely serious and is unprecedented. It is unacceptable.’
