A cyberattack wrecks freezers in hundreds of French stores

France is investigating a cyberattack that, between Sunday night and Monday morning, hit 500 to 700 food stores, according to authorities cited by NPR. The freezers were connected to the internet and managed with software from a Danish company. According to a tech investor interviewed, the affected stores had not updated it, and temperatures rose from about −4 °F to about 140 °F within hours (roughly −20 °C to 60 °C). So far there are no culprits and no ransom demand.

The investor, Julien Coulon, points to destabilisation ahead of the French election as a possible motive and expects such incidents to grow with AI, which will find unpatched software. That is an opinion: NPR does not report that AI was used in this attack.