Supermarket chains in Sweden, Belgium and Luxembourg reported that the temperatures of refrigerators and freezers in dozens of stores rose overnight, according to The Guardian. The newspaper's Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, reported that the rises prompted fears of a cyber-attack similar to one that, the Guardian said, caused millions of euros of food losses in France.
BBC News reported that freezers in Belgium and Sweden were hit by a suspected cyber-attack. In one store in Sweden, the freezer temperatures were set to 50 C (122F), the BBC said in its report. The summary of that report did not say how the settings were changed.
The two outlets differ on which countries were affected. The Guardian named Luxembourg, which the BBC's title and summary do not mention, while the BBC named Belgium and Sweden in its headline. Neither summary indicated whether the reports were drawn from the same incidents or from separate ones.
Both outlets described the events as suspected rather than confirmed cyber-attacks. The Guardian's account of the Swedish chain was cut off mid-sentence in the summary available, so further details of that company's account were not available for this report.
The available summaries did not name the supermarket chains involved, did not give a count of affected stores beyond the Guardian's description of dozens, and did not identify any organization investigating the incidents. The Guardian's report was published on Monday, November 2, 2026, and the BBC's report was published the same day.
Sources: The Guardian: Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack; BBC News: Supermarket freezers in Belgium and Sweden hit by suspected cyber-attack.