4 November 2026
Two major cyberattacks on European supermarkets, occurring within weeks of each other, exposed the vulnerabilities of not just military but critical EU infrastructure. EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christoph Hansen described them as a “targeted attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.” Cybersecurity experts believe these attacks may be part of Russia’s hybrid war against Europe, Politico reports .
No official statements have yet been made. “It is unknown who is behind this attack, and it may never be determined,” said a spokesperson for the Belgian cybersecurity agency. Russia, along with Iran, China, and North Korea, has been the most frequent perpetrator of cyberattacks in Europe. However, in this case, the nature of the actions allows experts to rule out three other countries. “We are firmly convinced that this activity can be attributed to a Russian threat actor, acting with state support,” said Xavier Bellekens, CEO of Lupovis, a cybersecurity firm.
The data she collected on attacks on honeypots (specialized traps for hackers) points to a “state-sponsored group,” Bellekens explained. He described the necessary knowledge, such as an understanding of industrial control systems and cooling technologies, as “non-trivial.” The servers used by the attackers had also been used by Russian groups some time ago. The repetition of these attacks is another factor pointing to Moscow’s involvement, Bellekens said.
On Monday, refrigeration and freezing units in supermarkets in at least nine EU countries failed. The cyberattack affected stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, and Romania. Three weeks earlier, hackers disabled refrigerators or increased their temperatures, sometimes to 50-55 degrees Celsius, in 700 French supermarkets. Producers were forced to dispose of spoiled food worth millions of euros.
Cyberattacks on supermarkets may fit into a pattern of growing cooperation between Russian intelligence agencies and criminal groups, which Western intelligence agencies have observed. “As geopolitical tensions escalate, I expect all government agencies to increasingly either collaborate with criminal groups or pose as criminals themselves, using ransomware and blackmail as cover to achieve state objectives,” says Joseph Rook, senior director at Recorded Future, a cyberintelligence firm.
Hackers can now also use artificial intelligence to find vulnerabilities.
Following cyberattacks on supermarkets in France, cybersecurity specialists at Claroty successfully used Anthropic’s Claude AI model to create a test program capable of attacking refrigeration systems. The project took about half an hour and cost $6, Claroty CTO Amir Preminger told The Wall Street Journal:
All you have to do is create a prompt for the AI and you can go have a coffee.
“It is unknown who is behind this attack, and it may never be determined,”
Give me a break. We all know who’s behind it. How about returning the compliment?