Hackers target French blood bank cold stores in cyber attack

Hackers have accessed control systems at France's national blood service and raised temperatures at three cold stores that hold vital blood products, according to the Guardian. The French blood service, known as EFS, reported that temperature and defrosting thresholds were adjusted to very high levels in what appears to be an escalation of recent cyber attacks targeting cooling equipment across Europe. [1]

The Guardian reported that alarm systems triggered during the incident allowed technicians to step in before any of the vital blood products were compromised. [1]

The cyber attack follows an earlier incident on 11 October 2026, when an unknown party hacked refrigeration controllers at up to 700 French supermarkets. That attack set the units to defrost mode overnight and forced store owners to discard large quantities of spoiled inventory, causing tens of millions of euros in financial losses. [5]