Hackers changed fridge settings at UK food suppliers. Check your connected kit today

By Carl Pugh · Published 4 November 2026

What happened

On Monday 2 November, attackers got into refrigeration systems at a handful of UK food businesses and changed their settings. They included members of the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers and Langridge Organic, a fruit and vegetable wholesaler. Some fridges began defrosting, and ITV reports one unit reached about 100°C.

At Langridge Organic, six of its ten fridges were accessed, with six to eight settings changed on each. Its managing director unplugged the network cable, which stopped the attack reaching the rest, and reset the settings. The affected units were either empty or no stock was lost.

The NCSC says it's working with the businesses involved and the impact so far is minimal. It follows similar attacks on supermarket and food supplier refrigeration across Europe. In France, the attack reportedly used old equipment connected to the internet with its default passwords still in place. The entry method for the UK incidents hasn't been confirmed.

Update 5 November. On the same Monday, France's national blood service, the EFS, says attackers pushed temperature and defrost limits to extreme levels at three plasma cold storage sites, after compromising a company that supplies its refrigeration equipment. Monitoring alarms caught the changes quickly, staff secured the plasma and nothing was lost. No link to the supermarket attacks has been confirmed.

Why it matters to you

Most businesses don't think of a fridge as a computer. But if a controller can be reached over the internet, anyone who finds it can try to log in. Old software and factory passwords make that easy.

For a food business, a few hours at the wrong temperature can mean thrown away stock, failed orders and a food safety problem. And the same weakness applies to heating, CCTV, alarms and door entry systems that an installer set up years ago and nobody has looked at since.

The French case adds a second lesson. The attackers got in through the supplier, not the blood service itself, and alarms limited the damage. Keeping attackers out matters, but so does knowing within minutes when a setting changes.

What to do this week

If you run fridges, freezers or cold rooms

1. Ask your refrigeration engineer today whether your controllers can be reached over the internet, and how.
2. Ask the company that maintains your kit how it protects its own remote access to it.
3. Change any default or shared passwords on the controllers and their monitoring apps.
4. Ask whether the controller software is still supported and up to date, and arrange updates if it isn't.
5. Turn on temperature alarms that go to a phone someone answers, day and night.
6. Make sure staff know they can unplug the network cable and reset settings by hand if something changes unexpectedly.

For every business

1. List every device an installer has connected to your network or the internet, including heating, CCTV, alarms and door entry.
2. Ask the installer who can log in remotely, and remove any access you don't need.
3. Keep these devices on a separate network from your office computers if you can.

If it happens to you

If settings change on their own, disconnect the device from the network, put the settings back by hand, move stock if you need to, and call your engineer. Report it to the NCSC and Action Fraud. My guide on who to call if you get hacked has the numbers, and my guide to listing your devices and services helps you find kit you've forgotten about. Want to know where else you're exposed? The free Cyber Security Check takes a few minutes and shows you where to start.