Hackers hit 3 French blood bank sites by raising fridge temperatures
Why it matters: alarms let staff move blood and plasma before any supplies were lost, but the breach widened Europe’s freezer hack campaign.
Hackers tampered with refrigeration controls at three French Blood Establishment sites, raising temperature and defrost settings in cold rooms used to store blood products, plasma and biobank samples. French health authorities said the incident, which struck overnight from Nov. 1 to Nov. 2, did not disrupt blood supplies because monitoring systems flagged the changes quickly and staff shifted materials to unaffected units. Remote access to the compromised refrigerators was shut off, and the situation was under control by Nov. 4. The case follows earlier attacks on supermarket cooling systems in France and other European countries, intensifying concerns about weak security in connected industrial equipment.