By Marco Hugo Barsotti MHB 
You are listening to a new special of am1575news, Francia24 and Radio Centrale Milano, in podcasting and on the medium waves.
What happened
In the night between October 11 and 12, a group of hackers took remote control of the refrigeration systems of hundreds of French supermarkets. By manipulating the automatic defrost function, they set continuous cycles at about fifty degrees Celsius, raising the freezer temperature from -18°C to values above zero. In some locations the overheating caused ice to melt and even equipment fires. The stores had to completely discard their fresh and frozen product stocks, with immediate effects on the food distribution chain.
Who managed the remote system
Contrary to the initial rumors, no external cloud operator figure emerged. The common element is the refrigeration supervision system produced by the Danish group Danfoss, which has more than fifty thousand installations in the large retail sector. The devices involved are the AK‑SM 800 and AK‑SC 355 models, now end‑of‑life and lacking security updates; the AK‑SC 355 was discontinued in 2016, while the AK‑SM 800A remains vulnerable. Danfoss confirmed that most of the affected units were obsolete and no longer supported.
Admin/Admin
The management interfaces of these controllers were connected directly to the internet to allow technicians and maintenance personnel to monitor temperatures, alarms and settings without physically moving. Too many devices were left publicly accessible without the use of VPNs or firewalls, a practice described as “against best practices” by the French agency CERT‑FR. Experts reported almost three thousand controllers visible online.
The flaw, catalogued CVE‑2025‑41450, has been known since 2025: it was enough to enter “admin” as the username and the current date as the password to gain administrative access.
Danfoss had released a fix in August 2025, but it was not applied universally, and the older models can no longer be updated.
Editorial
We underline this point. We wrote in the title “admin admin”, so to speak, username admin and password admin: it is a simplification; to make access more difficult they chose admin as the username and today’s date as the password. Something that even the most clueless Gmail user does not do.
You might think this is a clickbait story: so here is the complete list of sources we consulted, a consultation that anyone can perform if they wish.
franceinfo
Next
Futura-Sciences
Journal de l’économie
FrenchBreaches
BleepingComputer
The Hacker News
There are no words.
Economic damages
The attack affected more than three hundred Intermarché and Netto outlets, about a hundred Coopérative U stores, eighty Carrefour hypermarkets, thirty‑three Monoprix locations and several E.Leclerc branches. Individual losses range from fifty thousand to two hundred seventy thousand euros; two Intermarché stores in Haguenau recorded a total loss of two hundred seventy thousand euros, while a store in Wasselonne suffered about two hundred twenty thousand euros in damages. The overall estimate stands at tens of millions of euros, with the prospect of further costs for replacing and securing the equipment.
Who could be behind it
By October 15 no group had claimed the attack and so far no ransom demands or data thefts have emerged. The hypotheses range from opportunistic hackers or “kids playing around”, according to Pen Test Partners consultant Ken Munro, to state‑level operations hidden behind a hacktivist façade. Some analysts speculate involvement of pro‑Russian groups that in the past have claimed to have breached the cameras of French stores, but for now this is only conjecture.
The investigations
The Paris public prosecutor has opened a criminal proceeding, assigning it to the anti‑cybercrime office OFAC. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu requested the national cybersecurity agency ANSSI to coordinate the response with European partners, and director Vincent Strubel ordered the immediate disconnection of all Danfoss controllers from the network. The same vulnerability was found in supermarkets in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland and Spain. European agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen emphasized the importance of strengthening food safety at all levels, while the head of Coopérative U, Dominique Schelcher, described the attack as “unprecedented” and “extremely serious” for the national supply chain.
This is all for now. From the Paris newsroom, I am Rachel Costa: this is am1575news, Francia24 and Radio Centrale Milano.