Not Cool: Elite Hackers Turn French Freezers Into Slow Cookers
A cyber-attack raised refrigeration temperatures across hundreds of French supermarkets, prompting fears that the age of covert sous vide has arrived.
PARIS, A cyber-attack remotely raised the temperature settings on refrigeration units in hundreds of French supermarkets, spoiling food across the country and proving that modern warfare has reached the yoghurt aisle.
By Gary Opinions. Officials are treating it as a serious escalation in elite cyberwarfare. Experts have yet to establish whether the attackers meant to disrupt European supply chains or merely leave several thousand chickens a little less chilled.
The method appears to have been remarkably sophisticated. The hackers did not disable power stations or interfere with military satellites. They found the controls for supermarket fridges and turned them up, converting sealed dairy cabinets into a slow, humid dispute with physics.
“The next phase could involve changing the lighting in a petrol station.”
“You only attempt an operation like this with state-level resources, advanced encryption and a firm belief that brie belongs at room temperature,” said Professor Ludo Crankshaft, director of the International Centre for Applied Menace. “The next phase could involve changing the lighting in a petrol station.”
In the affected stores, food that had been kept at stable, closely monitored temperatures had to deal with remote administration. Products spoiled. The fridges carried on with their quiet electronic duties, apparently unaware that they had been recruited into strategic culinary coercion.
A senior official at the fictional Ministry of Extremely Cold Things called it “a new chapter in hostile refrigeration”. The ministry is preparing emergency advice for anyone who opens the freezer and finds that their frozen peas have become peas. It is expected to advise calm, vigilance and checking whether the peas remain peas.
That leaves the wider problem. Security analysts said the episode should concern every society that connects essential infrastructure to a network. Hospitals, airports and power grids are still considered important, but supermarket cooling has shown that it can ruin dinner on a national scale, which is where civilisation appears to keep its more sensitive feelings.
Governments are now considering a new arms race involving colder passwords, air-gapped ice cream and teams of trained freezer technicians. “We used to worry about hackers getting into the fridge,” said a man standing nearby. “Now we worry the fridge has agreed to help.”