Pentagon Hunts Hackers After Military Freezers Cook Food Instead of Freezing It

The Pentagon is now treating a rash of busted freezers at U.S. military bases as a possible cyberattack, and its investigators are teaming up with French law enforcement to figure out if the two countries got hit by the same crew, according to Reuters. The Pentagon hasn't confirmed that hackers were behind the American incidents, and nobody has been named as a suspect.

The U.S. damage spans at least six military commissaries, all hit in late August, with big piles of food ruined. At one base in Arizona, freezers slipped into defrost mode while everyone slept and started warming the contents instead of keeping them frozen.

France is chasing an eerily similar plot from earlier this month. Hackers grabbed control of refrigeration systems at upwards of 350 supermarkets and cranked the temperatures up remotely rather than simply killing the power. Some units got so hot they caught fire, and the bill could climb into the tens of millions of euros.

Cybersecurity experts say the weak spot is embarrassingly basic: loads of refrigeration systems still run on outdated software and controllers that were never built to touch the internet. That leaves them wide open for anyone who wants to remotely monkey with the thermostat.

So far, nothing is confirmed and no culprit has surfaced. But the implications sprawl well past spoiled groceries. If hackers can torch the food supply at military bases and hundreds of stores, the same trick could hit warehouses, food processing plants and the entire cold-storage chain — no intruder ever setting foot inside.

That's the twist here. This isn't about crooks swiping data anymore. It's the possibility of someone using the internet to physically wipe out essential supplies.