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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   2833 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/french-supermarket-chains-cyberattack-forced-115141288.html

Major French supermarket chains on Monday said they were hit by a cyberattack that caused their refrigerators to shoot up in temperature in hundreds of stores, forcing spoiled food to be thrown away and raising concerns about food security.

"Food security requires more attention at all levels," said the EU's food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen on X, condemning the attack and saying such "exploitation of food" was now a "reality".

At least 300 shops of Intermarche or its Netto brand were targeted, along with over 100 Cooperative U outlets, and several E. Leclerc stores, the retailers told AFP in separate statements.

BFM TV said hackers "managed to remotely trigger the forced defrosting of the refrigeration systems in numerous stores".

Those branches that were affected will have to "throw away all of the products" that are fresh and frozen, Intermarche told AFP.

Specialist French retail sector news website jebosseengrandedistribution.fr said other retail giants Carrefour Market and Monoprix were affected but the companies have yet to confirm this.

E. Leclerc confirmed to AFP "that a cyberattack affected one of its refrigeration equipment suppliers," resulting in "repercussions on the operation of refrigeration systems in several stores".

A source close to the issue said refrigeration control systems from Danish manufacturer Danfoss were targeted.

Danfoss told AFP in a statement that most of the affected equipment was "legacy" products which "no longer receive software or security updates".

It said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected, with a version of the former using "outdated firmware". It added that it had long advised supermarkets to update from those models. Danfoss gave no figures of how many systems were affected.

A person close to French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said France's cyber security agency had already identified "a vulnerability in software supplied by a Danish company and has contacted the vendor".

"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," he wrote on X.

He added that the company's teams were "fully mobilised" to restore the situation as quickly as possible.

"An investigation will be necessary to shed full light on this attack," he added.

Intermarche condemned the food waste and financial losses resulting from the attack, without providing figures.

BFM TV said temperatures were "altered remotely, resulting in the destruction of stocks of fresh and frozen products".

The incident comes against the background of growing concern over the potential havoc that can be caused in Europe in all sectors by malicious actors carrying out cyberattacks.

By likely affecting hundreds of units simultaneously, the attack demonstrated "a certain level of sophistication," he added.

This is a poetry of stupid and the hackers are the least guilty party here. Lets start with the obvious. Why freezers needs to be visible, why do they need to be remotely managed, why is not this done on dedicated internal network, why do they need firmware updates. How did we get to the point where a device that should be pid controller, compressor and alarm can be hacked.

To make you feel better - all of your nice EVs are also permanently connected and I doubt that there is air gap between the infotainment and the firmware of the battery pack. Someday someone will be able to accelerate or set on fire EV remotely. And probably soon.

This is a poetry of stupid and the hackers are the least guilty party here.

I despise this framing, and it is obviously false. The most guilty party in any situation is always the actual guilty party. When a women walks down a dark alley in skimpy clothing and gets raped, the most guilty party is the rapist. When a farm sets out an unattended stand with fresh produce and a box to put money in and someone comes and steals everything, the most guilty party is the thief. When a supermarket doesn't put locks on their toothpaste and someone comes and shoplifts a bunch of toothpaste, the most guilty party is the shoplifter. When someone puts refrigerators on the internet and they get hacked, the most guilty party is the hacker.

Yes, you need to be vigilant and aware that bad people exist and take precautions to protect yourself from them. If someone is in a low trust environment where bad people are prevalent, it is irresponsible and negligent not to take precautions, and anyone who fails to do so does share some of the blame for the obvious outcome where the bad people harm them. But they share less than half of the blame, because if the bad people didn't exist then obviously no harm would happen at all and the precautions wouldn't be necessary. There is a finite amount of blame to distribute, and the majority always belongs with the bad people who actually do bad things.

The most guilty party in any situation is always the actual guilty party.

Yes. The sysadmin. IT security with minimal exceptions[1] always had serious component of victim blaming in the 90s.

The difference with the rest of your scenarios is that in IT there was never trust which could be betrayed. Everyone knew from the beginning that everyone is out to get you. There was never presumption of safety on the internet.

So a better analogy is who is to blame when a soldier dies on the battlefield - the enemy shooter or the soldier that didn't take cover?

[1] Technically illiterate activists in the third world and the likes.

I don't fully buy this. Telecoms were originally bult completely unsecured until phreakers ruined it. And even up until 2024 or so people could put whatever number they wanted on the caller id. Email was largely the same, totally unsecured, until the spam waves forced the mass lockdown.

There was the presumption of safety on the internet when it was a place only accessible to elites and nerds. And maybe now that's over, especially with the shitholes of the world getting hooked up. Indian cubercriminals act with absolute impunity, and nobody does a thing about it.

I'm not sure if we can ever get the trust back, but drone striking a few fraud factories would be a great start

On the other hand, the first ever spam campaign happened in the 70's on ARPANET

Was that e-mail spam in roughly the modern sense? The word "spam" was originally used to describe off-topic posts repeatedly posted to Usenet, and only later became a term for unsolicited bulk e-mail. (In both cases, the junk was mostly but not entirely commercial ads, initially for legitimate businesses like immigration law firms but over time only for scams as spam became illegitimate)

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