Cyberattack forces Stockholm cafe to discard food stock

A cyberattack on refrigeration systems forced a food cafe in central Stockholm to throw away its stock, SVT reported. Chef and food creator Marion Ringborg said water poured from the freezer room after its defrost system was activated.

Ringborg said she was woken by a call at 5am telling her to come to the cafe because water was running inside. When she arrived, emergency services opened the freezer room. The heat had also triggered its sprinkler system, she said.

The cafe’s dairy and meat refrigerators also had to be emptied. “It affects us enormously,” Ringborg said, adding that ingredients bought for the cafe and the baker’s work had all gone to waste.

The attack also affected 23 Ica stores, seven Coop stores in central Sweden and an Axfood-owned warehouse for online grocery deliveries. Axfood said it had to discard refrigerated and frozen goods worth about three million kronor at the warehouse. Ica and Coop had not yet estimated their losses.

Reports of affected refrigeration systems also came from Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Estonia and the Netherlands. On 12 October, hundreds of stores in France were hit by a cyberattack that raised temperatures in refrigerators and freezers. Ringborg said she had not known the cafe’s systems were connected to the internet.