US warns of 'ongoing cyber threat' to industrial refrigeration systems
“The United States iswarningof an "ongoing cyber threat" to industrial refrigeration systems, saying in astatementissued on Thursday that every organisation that depends on cold storage should assume…”
Thestatement, which follows a spate of hacks against commercial freezersin the United Statesand Europe, said that unidentified "malicious cyber actors" were targeting vulnerabilities in internet-accessible electronic temperature and commercial refrigeration controllers in retail grocery and cold storage facilities. Although short on detail about the hackers involved, the statement suggested that the threat to commercial cold storage was ongoing.
Read:New cyberattack on supermarket fridges sweeps across Europe. Malicious cyber actors are targeting industrial refrigeration & cold chain monitoring systems. Our joint Fact Sheet with federal partners outlines key steps orgs can take to reduce risks to inventory, equipment, and operations.
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Upic.twitter.com/Det07rTWsz— Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (@CISAgov)November 5, 2026"If successfully exploited, the actors could change the temperature and possibly cause physical impacts such as fire hazards, loss of inventory and changes to the service life of the system," said thestatement, which was jointly issued by the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the departments of health, transport and agriculture.
"Every organisation that depends on refrigeration and monitoring systems should assume it could be a target," said Chris Butera, CISA's acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity. FBI Cyber Branch Operations Director Brett Leatherman said that the government was "seeing these systems targeted across critical infrastructure sectors globally".
The governmenturgedoperators of industrial refrigeration control systems to pull their devices off the public internet, isolate them from their corporate networks, and promptly apply software updates. At least three waves of hacks havehitcommercial fridges and freezers in the past few months.
Pentagon investigators are treating a series of mysterious malfunctions that hit grocery store refrigeration units on US military bases in August as a cyberattack, Reutersfirst reported last week. A sweeping hack of French freezers last month dealt tens of millions of euros' worth of damage, while a second wave of hackingaffected more than 100 storesacross Europe on Monday.
Read More:European supermarkets rush to patch vulnerabilities after region-wide fridge hack. The hacks have raised concerns over the ability of hackers toremotely tamper with refrigeratorsand other critical devices.
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