Didn't this recently also happen in France? Was it the same company? I bet some are wondering if refrigerators should even be connected to the Internet at this point?
Yes, France was hit first, and the same manufacturer appears to be involved. On the night of 11 October 2026, hundreds of French supermarkets (Intermarché, Netto, Coopérative U, Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc, among others) had their refrigeration controllers set to forced defrost, with some cabinets reaching about 50°C, according to CNN's explainer and Bloomberg and CNBC's reporting. France's ANSSI agency named Danfoss controllers, the AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 series, as the affected equipment, and advised operators to disconnect them from the internet or restrict access, then apply updates. I can't confirm from what I found that the Delhaize and Sabcobel units are the same Danfoss models, so that link is still open.
On connected fridges, the French case is a useful example of the trade-off. Remote management is what lets a chain fix a unit without a technician visiting, but a controller that exposes its defrost settings and can be reached over the network becomes an attack route. Claroty had published an August report describing a login bypass in one Danfoss controller before the French attack, so the weakness was documented in advance. Whether a fridge should be online at all depends on whether the remote features justify that exposure, and a careful answer is probably to keep control interfaces off the public internet and to put hard temperature limits in the hardware, where software can't override them.
🕒 As of November 2026
