A cyber attack on French blood banks affected refrigeration monitoring and control systems at several regional facilities, including three where storage units were targeted. The incident did not disrupt blood supplies, according to the French health ministry and the French Blood Establishment (EFS).
The attack took place overnight between Sunday and Monday. EFS spokesperson Charley Dubois said staff were alerted to the problems and transferred blood stocks to refrigerators that were not connected to the affected systems.
“We have staff round the clock since blood can be needed at any time. They were warned about the problems by alerts and moved the blood to other refrigerators that were not connected,” she said.
The health ministry said the situation was under control on Wednesday, with remote access to the affected refrigerators disabled. Investigators are examining how the attack was carried out, which equipment may have been affected and when the systems can safely be returned to service.
Connected refrigerators targeted across Europe
The incident occurred at around the same time as hackers tampered with refrigerators at supermarkets in eight European countries, from Sweden to Belgium. Retailers were forced to discard large quantities of food as a result.
The supermarket attacks echoed a similar incident in France three weeks earlier, when police said hackers had taken control of cooling units at hundreds of stores. That attack caused fires and food losses.
The incidents have prompted concern in the European Union about vulnerabilities in connected infrastructure, amid heightened security tensions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
