Hackers Try to Boil French Blood Bank Plasma at 230 Degrees

Hackers attempted to boil life-saving blood plasma in French blood banks by remotely cranking freezer temperatures from -22 degrees to 230 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the New York Post ^[1]. The attack targeted three regional facilities managed by the French Blood Establishment, or EFS, earlier this week. Staff members, who monitor the storage rooms around the clock, received alerts and quickly transferred the plasma to unaffected refrigerators before any damage occurred.

The French weekly La Canard Enchaîné, which first reported the incident, stated that the hackers tried to reset the storage units from their standard minus 30 Celsius to 110 Celsius ^[2]. This extreme heat would have ruined bags of plasma intended for transfusions and medicine manufacturing. EFS spokesperson Charley Dubois confirmed that no blood products were lost and no health consequences were identified, the BBC reported via the Independent.

This incident marks the second major cyberattack on European cold storage in less than a week. Just days prior, hackers targeted refrigerators in supermarkets across eight countries, including Sweden, Belgium, and Estonia, causing tons of spoiled food ^[1]. The New York Post noted that these attacks follow similar incidents in France last month, where hundreds of supermarket fridges were hacked, leading to fires and significant food losses.

The Dutch supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize, one of the chains hit in the earlier mid-October attacks, announced that the disruption could reduce its fourth-quarter sales by up to 250 million euros ^[2]. CEO Franz Muller described cyber threats as an "increasingly harsh reality of doing business today" in a statement released with quarterly earnings. The company had previously blamed "malicious actions by others" for the outages that affected its apps and websites across Europe and the United States.

Coolworld, the supplier of the refrigeration equipment used at the EFS sites, stated that the vulnerability related to a third-party component and was outside its direct control ^[2]. The company noted that only a limited number of units were affected. France’s national cybersecurity agency and Health Ministry are currently investigating how the hackers gained access to the systems, according to CBS News ^[3].

The Pentagon is also investigating a malfunction of freezers at six military bases in August, treating it as a possible cyberattack, adding to the global concern over connected infrastructure ^[1]. These incidents have heightened worries within the European Union about the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure, especially amid rising suspicions of state-sponsored sabotage. For now, the blood banks remain operational, with remote access to the affected freezers disabled as a precaution.