Pentagon Investigates Military Base Freezer Failures as Cyberattack

The Pentagon is treating a string of freezer malfunctions at U.S. military base commissaries in late August as a suspected cyberattack, according to four officials familiar with the matter. Investigators are working with officials in France where a widespread cyberattack on supermarket freezers caused millions of dollars worth of damage.

Reuters reports that at least six base commissaries across the United States were affected, according to a Reuters review of Facebook posts and website updates from the bases. In at least one case, investigators found that someone had cranked freezer temperatures up overnight rather than the units simply failing, leaving food wilted and melted by morning.

At Fort Huachuca in Arizona, the base’s Facebook account posted on August 26 that a freezer had “went into defrost mode where it heated up all the food. Trust us when we say it was ‘spoiled.'”

US military investigators are now in contact with French counterparts about a similar cyberattack that struck commercial freezers in France earlier in October. That attack overrode temperature controls at more than 350 establishments and disrupted supermarkets nationwide. Some refrigeration units caught fire from the excessive heat. One supermarket owner estimated the total damage could reach tens of millions of euros across the country.

Breitbart News previously reported that the cyberattack in France heated freezers up to 122 degrees:

The attack forced refrigeration units at supermarkets including Intermarché, Leclerc and Coopérative U into a continuous defrost cycle at 122 degrees. Normally these units defrost for about two hours a day. Sources described “a wave of heat” escaping from fridges and freezers as a result. The attack reportedly targeted refrigeration controls made by Danfoss, and also hit deliveries and in-store pricing through electronic shelf labels.

Dominique Schelcher, president of Coopérative U, confirmed the incident earlier this week. In an English translation quoted in the article, he said: “A cyberattack has been affecting the refrigeration production facilities of several stores in our network since last night.” He called the situation “extremely serious” and said teams had been mobilized to fix the problem, with an investigation to follow.

Losses are expected to climb into the millions of Euros as shops are forced to discord spoiled food.

The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division’s Cyber Field Office is involved in the U.S. investigation and is working with French law enforcement on what it described as “the refrigeration outages in Europe.” A unit of US Cyber Command is also coordinating with other agencies. The Pentagon said it is “working in close coordination with interagency and law enforcement partners.”

It’s unclear how far the Pentagon’s investigation has gotten, or whether officials have reached any conclusions about who is behind it, or why.

Many of the refrigeration units affected in France used controllers made by the Danish manufacturer Danfoss, some of which were obsolete or running outdated firmware. It is not clear whether Danfoss controllers, or those of another brand, were used at the affected U.S. bases. Danfoss did not respond to requests for comment. The company has said that in 2022, hackers targeted or breached supermarkets in Russia and Israel by exploiting outdated versions of its cold storage controllers.

This isn’t the first time hackers have gone after refrigeration systems. In December 2025, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles accused a Ukrainian woman of belonging to a hacker group that disabled refrigeration at a meatpacking facility in 2024, ruining more than 2,000 pounds of meat.