Why Europe’s supermarket hacks should worry Beijing

(Edited and refined by Bai Kelei, with the assistance of AI translation.)

On 11 October, hackers targeted refrigeration systems in several French supermarkets, remotely raising refrigerator temperatures to as high as 50°C and triggering fires and food losses. By 2 November, the attacks had spread across Europe, hitting supermarkets in more than 10 countries, including Belgium, Sweden, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland, Romania and Italy.

In both incidents, hackers took control of Internet of Things (IoT) refrigeration equipment and remotely activated their defrost/heating mode. Temperatures inside chilled and frozen food cabinets rose sharply, spoiling large quantities of fresh and frozen food that the supermarkets had to discard. The European Commission described this as “an attempt to deliberately sabotage our food supply chain and undermine consumers’ confidence”. Although the attacks only resulted in localised disruptions to fresh food supplies and not widespread food shortages, they exposed the vulnerability of modern food supply chains to cyberattacks.

Both attacks fall under the broader issue of food security. More specifically, they point to an emerging crisis in food supply chain security in the digital age. Regarded as technologically sophisticated cross-border cyber sabotage and a form of geopolitical hybrid conflict, this type of attack differs from conventional terrorist attacks. Even so, they have already caused widespread public alarm.

China has not yet experienced something similar. However, Chinese cybersecurity experts and official media have issued strong security warnings in response to the series of incidents in Europe. China faces similar vulnerabilities and should take targeted measures.

New weapon in hybrid warfare

The attacks on supermarket refrigeration equipment in Europe mark a new phase in cyberwarfare targeting food security. The hackers neither stole money nor locked users out of systems in exchange for ransoms. Instead, they simply tampered with industrial control system settings to cause considerable damage.

The root cause of the attacks’ success and their widespread impact is the blind trust that modern retail and logistics supply chains place in the IoT. In pursuit of operational efficiency, lower energy consumption and remote maintenance, tens of thousands of cold-storage facilities, logistics trucks and supermarket cold rooms have left their control interfaces directly accessible through the internet. Additionally, weak authentication in logistics supply chains, the use of default passwords and a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) have also turned cold chain logistics into an unprotected target for hackers. These are not just data-breach cyberattacks because they destroy food stocks and can easily cause panic.

In today’s highly digitalised and globalised world, the failure of even a small physical or digital node in the food supply chain can lead to a food security crisis within hours. China’s food security concerns differ from those of Europe. Over the past two decades, China’s efforts have largely focused on combating adulteration during transport and processing. In recent years, its focus has shifted towards managing food import and export chokepoints due to geopolitical tensions and extreme weather.

But as China’s retail and fresh food cold-chain networks rapidly adopt smart technologies, major food security concerns with broad and profound implications that affect the sustenance of its 1.4 billion people have emerged.

Hyper-competition drives lightning fulfillment

China’s cold-chain logistics market is worth more than 550 billion RMB (aprox. US$83.5 billion). The latest figures released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing show that total demand for cold-chain logistics in China reached 381.4 million tonnes in 2025. Annual revenue rose to 556.71 billion RMB, representing a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% between 2019 and 2025.

The scale of digitalisation in the food supply chain is reflected in China’s cold-storage capacity, which has exceeded 200 million cubic metres, and its fleet of more than 400,000 refrigerated vehicles. Alongside this expansion, tens of millions of RFID tags, high-precision temperature sensors, geofencing systems and automated temperature-control devices have been installed, either under mandatory requirements or through widespread adoption, in cold storage, on shelves and in refrigerated trucks. Data collection and real-time transmission have been automated at every stage from production to retail, including food inspection, goods entering and leaving warehouses, and stock transfer.

Intense competition in China’s distinctive on-demand retail and online fresh food sectors has forced cold-chain networks to develop the capacity to fulfil orders within minutes. In first-tier cities alone, there are tens of thousands of digitally enabled local fulfilment warehouses and smart fresh food micro-warehouses. AI systems not only monitor refrigerated vehicle temperatures in real time but also use big data to predict local demand, readying fresh food stocks within a half-hour drive of consumers in advance. Digital and smart cold-chain logistics now extend beyond storage, integrating seamlessly with systems serving hundreds of thousands of riders on instant delivery platforms such as Meituan and JD.com.

To extend smart traceability and safety oversight across the entire supply chain for frozen and fresh produce and all other food, China is accelerating the development of a unified national system for traceability. Major retailers and national-level enterprises such as COFCO are introducing blockchain technology into fresh food supply chains. From the slaughter of a pig or the harvesting of a vegetable, through every temperature fluctuation during long-distance cold-chain transport, to final placement in a supermarket’s refrigerated cabinet, data from the entire journey are recorded on the blockchain, creating a tamper-proof digital identity.

Digital efficiency creates exposed flanks

The scale of smart technology adoption in China’s fresh food retail cold-chain network is reflected not only in its role in catering to 1.4 billion people, but also in its extraordinary granularity. These technologies are transforming relatively unsophisticated refrigerated transport into an ecosystem encompassing AI forecasting, IoT temperature control, blockchain traceability and delivery within minutes. But this also makes the network vulnerable to remote attacks. Whether through deliberate hacking or unintended AI system failures, it could experience similar attacks to that in Europe.

Although China has the world’s largest high-standard modern warehouse capacity and cold-chain logistics parks, much of its underlying industrial control technology, including programmable logic controller (PLC) systems and temperature-control software, relies partly on foreign technology or is not subjected to the same cybersecurity standards. The hacking incidents in Europe expose how the “smart retail and smart cold chains” that China is working hard to expand could also become vulnerabilities exploited by malicious actors. To safeguard food security in the digital era, China needs to plan ahead and strengthen regulation in several areas.

First, strict physical and network isolation. Industrial control systems, including PLCs, and temperature-control systems at critical stages such as food storage, cold-chain transport and central kitchens must be physically isolated from corporate office networks and the public internet. Furthermore, no core temperature-control equipment should be directly accessible through the public internet.

Mandatory hardware-software “physical lockout” mechanisms must also be established. Manufacturers must embed tamper-proof physical limits directly into the firmware of temperature-control and refrigeration equipment. Even if hackers seize top administrative access, hardware safeguards will prevent them from remotely heating chillers to 50°C, physically eliminating the risk of catastrophic sabotage. 

Zero-trust architecture and MFA should also be introduced. All food supply chain management software must require regular changes of strong passwords, widespread usage of MFA and strict auditing of every adjustment to system settings. China’s immediate task is to identify exposed equipment. Relevant local departments and security agencies should actively help cold-chain operators and supermarkets check whether any temperature-control or refrigeration control equipment is directly exposed to the public internet.

Food security in the digital era depends not only on how many tonnes of rice and wheat are stockpiled in warehouses, but also on whether the hundreds of millions of digital nodes connecting farms, cold stores, trucks and our dining tables can operate securely. The front line of food supply chain security is shifting from vast tracts of farmland far from cities to cold-chain logistics parks on urban fringes and the refrigeration machinery rooms of ordinary supermarkets. Only by integrating cybersecurity defences, transparent oversight of logistics and diversified global trade networks can China build a modern food supply chain that is secure, reliable and resilient over the long term.

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