Hundreds of French supermarkets hit by cyber attack

Hackers took control of refrigeration software in Mousquetaires Group supermarkets - which owns Intermarché and Netto.

The cyber criminals programmed the refrigeration temperatures to soar, which resulted in heating the internal temperature to 50C/120F overnight between Sunday evening and early hours Monday.

As managers arrived to open up, store temperatures were well above normal due to fridges and freezers running far too hot and small fires needed to be extinguished in some stores.

Spoiled food, repairs, and loss of trade is estimated to cost Mousquetaires Group millions of euros, no official figure has been calculated yet.

The chief executive of Coopérative U said this was an "extremely serious and unprecedented" attack. More than 100 of their stores were targeted, hackers took control of software provided  by Danish engineering firm Danfoss.

The same software regulates refrigeration in 180 stores from Intermarché and its Netto brand who were predominantly targeted. Another 100 shops disconnected from the internet in an attempt to stop the same thing happening to them. Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc were also targeted, although they did not suffer the same losses.

In the Alsace region two supermarkets reported losses of €270,000 (£228,000) between them.

According to Danfoss the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated. They added "Reliable refrigeration is critical to our customers' operations, and we remain committed to supporting our customers and helping them maintain secure and reliable systems they are used to."

The current figures believe 400 stores have been impacted out of 15,000 across France.

The French have a specific cyber-crime investigation looking into the attack, which Paris prosecutor's called a "large-scale cyber-attack affecting the refrigerators of several major food retail chains across France".

No one has discussed the question of ransom or if the desired effect was to disrupt.

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This article has been created referencing The Telegraph, Sky News stories.