Hackers plunged dozens of European supermarkets into chaos. It should worry Australians how easy it was

November 10, 2026 — 10:10am

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You didn’t need to be a cyber genius to cook the frozen peas in supermarkets across Europe this month.

On November 2, freezers in dozens of stores across at least 11 countries were cranked up remotely, some to 50 degrees. Carrefour and Ikea in Belgium, ICA and Coop in Sweden, Kesko in Finland and SuperValu in Ireland were among those hit. It was a repeat. Three weeks earlier, hackers had done the same to hundreds of French supermarkets.

Security agencies have been warning about this since 2014, when France’s cyber agency, ANSSI, first told operators never to put these controllers directly online. Overnight, French Foreign Minister ⁠Jean-Noël Barrot named Iran as the country behind the hacks and called for European sanctions against Tehran, amid broader concerns about Iranian cyberattacks and terrorism.

It sounds innocuous – defrosted peas, carrots and cauliflower – but it should worry Australians. The same controllers, the small computers that set a fridge’s temperature, also run cold rooms in hospitals, medicine warehouses and data centres.

In France, hackers have already reached the cold storage of at least three blood banks, the national blood service said last week. The blood was moved, and no patients were........

© Brisbane Times