A food analytics expert says a cyberattack like the one that recently targeted grocery store chains in France is possible here.
Some 700 food retailers in that country were struck earlier this week by hackers who remotely turned up the heat in thousands of coolers and freezers causing significant food losses – and even starting fires.
Sylvain Charlebois of the Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University says similar cyberattacks have already occurred in this country, including one affecting Sobeys in 2022.
“Most of our grocers have actually been cyberattacked already,” says Charlebois. He says Sobeys had to pay a ransom of $25 million at that time. “It is a real threat to our grocers and not just our grocers, but the entire food supply chain.”
(VOCM News)
Charlebois suspects that the incidents in France were precipitated by a ransom demand that the grocers refused to pay.
He says grocers typically have a number of systems in place to protect their inventory, but there are still vulnerabilities.
He says the hackers could have seriously compromised food safety by bringing the temperature in the freezers and coolers up, allowing bacteria to grow, and bring it back down, compromising food safety “without the grocers knowing.”
