Hackers set French blood service cold rooms to reach 110°C, Le Canard enchaîné reports
Hackers broke into Coolworld, a company that maintains cold storage containers for France's national blood service, the Établissement français du sang (EFS), on the night of 1 to 2 November, French weekly Le Canard enchaîné reported. Cold rooms that keep donor blood samples at -30°C were programmed to reach 110°C, according to the paper. An on-duty technician spotted the temperature rise, and the Health Ministry says there were no operational consequences. The EFS later acknowledged that frozen plasma meant for transfusion was also targeted.
Hackers targeted the cold storage used by France's national blood service in an attack on one of its contractors, the French investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné reported on Tuesday, 3 November.
According to the paper, Coolworld, a company that maintains storage containers for the Établissement français du sang (EFS), notably in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France, was hacked on 1 November. Cold rooms in which donor blood samples are kept at -30°C were then programmed to reach 110°C, Le Canard enchaîné wrote.
The rise was caught in time, officials told the weekly. "An on-duty technician noticed a rise in temperature in the cold rooms during the night from Sunday to Monday," the EFS said. France's Health Ministry played the incident down: "There are zero operational consequences, because the situation was spotted," it told the paper.
The EFS first said the affected samples were kept as part of a health monitoring system linked to blood transfusion. It later acknowledged that "frozen plasma intended for transfusion" had also been targeted, Le Canard enchaîné reported. Fresh frozen plasma is normally stored at -25°C or colder.
The 110°C figure is the temperature the equipment was set to reach, according to the report. Neither the EFS nor the ministry has said how warm the cold rooms actually got before the problem was stopped, how many sites or units were affected, or whether any plasma or samples had to be thrown away. Anadolu Agency also reported the incident on Wednesday, citing Le Canard enchaîné.
No group has publicly claimed the attack, and the report does not say who was behind it or how the hackers got in. Le Canard enchaîné presented it as the latest in a series of attacks on refrigeration systems, after supermarket fridges: earlier this week, fridges and freezers were sabotaged overnight at supermarkets in Sweden and Belgium, and Romania's national cybersecurity directorate (DNSC) said refrigeration equipment in six stores of one retail chain had heated up in a possible cyberattack. No link between the incidents has been officially confirmed.
Supermarket fridges and freezers sabotaged overnight in Sweden and Belgium in suspected cyberattack