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The hacker attack that hit around a hundred supermarkets in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia and Ireland has not spared Italy. At least four Coop stores, three in Catania and one in Palermo, were affected by a suspected cyberattack that caused temperatures to rise in refrigeration systems and forced shopkeepers to throw away food that had overheated.
This was initially reported to Ansa by Giuseppe Spadaro, general manager of the Radenza group, which runs the Coop supermarkets. “We have verified that it is an attack on our remote control system for frozen-food counters. After a careful screening it appears there is no further damage, but the attack did take place,” later confirmed Coop Radenza’s chief executive, Danilo Radenza.
Reports of incidents also at companies in Tuscany and Emilia Romagna
According to Spadaro, the postal police are reconstructing the origin and scale of the attacks and checking whether there are links with what has happened in other European countries. “We are calculating the damage. In some cases we have fixed the problem.We have already contacted the National Cybersecurity Agency and activated protocols to carry out in depth investigations,” said the Radenza director.
The National Cybersecurity Agency (Acn) said it has received reports of an incident affecting a Tuscan company in the collective catering sector and has detected an attack against a company in Emilia that produces frozen foods.
Acn has recommended urgently checking whether control and remote assistance systems used by food distribution chains are exposed on the Internet, as well as strengthening remote access via VPNs and multi factor authentication, reviewing privileged accounts and updating or replacing devices that are no longer supported by manufacturers, Ansa reports.
A meeting is scheduled for tomorrow between the Agency, sector federations and the main national large scale retail companies.
The previous hacker attack on supermarkets in France on 12 October
The postal police are investigating possible links with the incidents that occurred in other European countries. The Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic (Copasir) will also request information from the government on Tuesday.
The cyberattack took place at around four in the morning and pushed refrigerator temperatures in the affected supermarkets in Europe above 50 degrees, with retailers finding themselves at opening time forced to throw away spoiled food.
The European Union has described the situation as “highly worrying”. On 12 October, another cyberattack had already hit the main supermarket chains in France, causing losses of millions of euros. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but there appear to be few doubts that the incidents are connected.
To investigate what has happened, Palazzo Chigi has decided to convene a meeting to be attended by the Director of the National Cybersecurity Agency and the heads of the intelligence agencies, coordinated by the undersecretary to the prime minister’s office Alfredo Mantovano.