ROME — An emergency meeting was convened at the Prime Minister’s office yesterday morning to address the latest cybersecurity threat: a wave of attacks that have disrupted refrigeration systems at supermarkets across Europe, including Italy. The hackers may be shadowy figures, but the suspicion is that they are acting on behalf of a foreign government. At the meeting at Palazzo Chigi, attended by Undersecretary to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, the Head of Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency and the Directors of Intelligence Services, one possibility loomed large: a foreign state actor may be behind the attacks, its fingerprints all over the operation.

No one is naming the country, but the suspicion clearly points to Russia and a campaign of “hybrid warfare” targeting European nations that support Ukraine. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi voiced a similar assessment.

“We are concerned,” Piantedosi said yesterday during a visit to Turin. “This has happened in several European countries and is presumably a coordinated initiative at the European level by someone whose actions clearly reflect hostility.”

Italian experts are working to establish exactly what happened. “Our specialists are on the case,” Piantedosi added, referring to experts from the National Cybersecurity Agency and the Postal Police. “We hope to get to the bottom of it soon.”

Further reports are expected from Europe's cybersecurity network. The European Commission has already activated the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA’s CYCLONE network, while European Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen has also taken action. Analysts across Europe are comparing national reports to determine whether the attacks followed the same pattern, whether they can be traced to the same source and, ultimately, who was responsible.

Their preliminary warning echoes the conclusions reached at Palazzo Chigi: the objective may not have been to generate food waste, but rather to erode consumer confidence.

The meeting at Palazzo Chigi was followed by a second, more technical session in the afternoon at the National Cybersecurity Agency, bringing together government representatives and private-sector operators across the food supply chain. The government’s statement afterward sought to put the scale of the damage into perspective.

“Only a small number of retail outlets have been affected, out of the thousands operating across the country,” it said. The stores targeted by the attacks were “for the most part still equipped with obsolete security systems, with interfaces directly exposed to the internet and weaknesses in authentication mechanisms. Most of the distribution chain, by contrast, has up-to-date protection systems capable of repelling malicious intrusions.”

The government is keen to play down the incident. Indeed, the damage reported in Northern Europe has been far more extensive than the limited disruption in Italy, where four stores in Sicily, two in Sardinia and one in Abruzzo are believed to have been affected. Could Italy’s technological lag, paradoxically, make it less vulnerable than other countries to attacks launched over the internet?

Or is the difference simply a matter of security systems that are working as intended? In Tuscany, for example, Siaf, a company specializing in catering services for schools, hospitals and businesses, announced yesterday that its IT systems for managing and monitoring refrigeration had also been targeted in a cyberattack.

“Thanks to our monitoring and control systems, the anomaly was detected promptly, and the necessary measures were immediately activated, allowing us to contain the incident and ensure continuity of service,” the company said.

The government’s main concern now is preparing for further attacks. The National Cybersecurity Agency is urging all operators across the supply chain to update their systems. It also wants to ensure that the incidents pose no risk to public health.

“No cases of risk to public health resulting from food thawing have been identified,” the Palazzo Chigi statement said. Any reports of anomalies are forwarded by the National Cybersecurity Agency to the Carabinieri’s NAS Food and Health Protection Unit to ensure a prompt response.

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