ROME, Nov. 3 (EconoTimes) — Italy said attacks on supermarket refrigeration had affected only a few locations and no cases of public-health risk tied to thawed frozen food had emerged by Nov. 3, as officials coordinated a cross-border response.
Cabinet Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano and Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida met with intelligence chiefs and the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN), Palazzo Chigi said. The government described the impact in Italy as very limited and said most of the food-distribution chain had updated protections. It reported no cases of public-health risk attributable to thawed frozen food as of Nov. 3.
ACN’s alert addressed retailers, food-logistics operators, industrial refrigeration businesses and maintenance providers. It urged them to check whether refrigeration controls or remote-support tools could be reached from the public internet, move those systems into isolated environments, require virtual private networks and multifactor authentication for remote connections, review administrator-level accounts, and update or replace equipment no longer supported by vendors.
The European Commission said it held two coordination meetings on Nov. 3. One was with the EU Interinstitutional Task Force, alongside Commission services, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol); the other was coordinated through the European cyber crisis liaison organisation network (EU CyCLONe) with affected member states and national authorities.
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said national authorities were leading the investigations and urged caution in assigning responsibility. The Associated Press named five countries in a Nov. 2 report, while Agence France-Presse (AFP) later reported incidents in at least 11 countries, including Italy. AFP also reported that no group had claimed responsibility.
The Associated Press reported that some retailers discarded food after refrigeration was disrupted. The Commission said national authorities were investigating the incidents.
