BRUSSELS — The European Union institutions kept calm and carried on regulating on Friday, as many other parts of the world muttered at their computers over a massive digital outage at U.S. tech leader Microsoft.
The European Commission, Council of the EU and European Parliament were able to carry on business as usual, with systems remaining largely unaffected.
Microsoft’s global outage, which disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot started on Thursday, with internet traffic monitoring site Downdetector reporting issues in at least 74 countries. The tracker logged nearly 140,000 reports of Outlook problems at its peak.
Microsoft on Friday morning said recovery was still uneven. “At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation,” it said.
At the European Commission “the impact … is very limited and does not affect our operations,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told POLITICO. He said the outage had a “minor impact on a limited number of applications, such as the slowness of SharePoint.” Outlook and Teams were “fully operational,” Regnier said.
The Council of the EU, which gathers representatives of national governments, also carried on work: Outlook and Teams were “working on our side,” a Council official told POLITICO, declining to give more details on the institution’s IT setup.
The Parliament’s press service said in a statement to POLITICO that it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation as a precaution.
The outage is exposing the reliance of companies and governments on Microsoft services — an issue that has also been a longstanding concern in Europe among proponents of keeping more control over IT and digital infrastructure.
One example is the government of Germany’s northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, which in 2025 moved about 40,000 mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to open-source alternatives to reduce their reliance on U.S. tech.
The state’s digitalization minister, Dirk Schrödter, said in a comment to POLITICO on Friday that disruptions like the Microsoft outage “must be taken very seriously,” whether the state uses open-source software or products from individual providers. “We must be able to intervene ourselves at any time if problems arise,” he said.
Ireland’s privacy regulator has fined Tinder owner Match Group €11 million, saying the dating app failed to give users a full copy of their personal data upon request.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said on Friday that a tool Tinder provides to users who want to download their personal data is not up to scratch. The DPC had launched an inquiry in January 2020, focusing on whether Tinder’s “Download My Data” tool is complaint with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
In a decision announced Friday, the DPC said the tool failed to provide users with all of their personal data, and that certain categories of information were omitted, or users were only given a summary of their data.
The regulator said the tool did not meet requirements set out in the GDPR, that people have a right to access the personal data about them that a company holds.
Deputy Commissioner at the Irish DPC, Graham Doyle, said automated access tools “can be a useful and efficient way” to give people access to their personal data, but they “must be fair and transparent to individuals regarding the extent of the data provided.”
Match Group has been fined €11 million, issued with a reprimand, and ordered to bring its data processing into compliance with the GDPR within three months.
A Match Group spokesperson said the company will appeal: “Tinder engaged with the DPC throughout this investigation, and we stand behind the privacy protections we’ve built for our users.”
This article has been updated with a comment from Match Group.
BRUSSELS — Some 71% of Europeans want the EU to have its own army, according to new polling results seen by POLITICO that reveal growing unease about Washington’s reliability and deep divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The 2026 Trends report by security think tank GLOBSEC found that support for the European Union to have its own army was strong across the member countries surveyed, reaching 82% in Romania followed by Lithuania at 78% and France at 75%.
Even in countries traditionally wary of European defense integration, majorities backed the idea with some 70% of respondents in Poland and Bulgaria in support of an EU army, alongside 69% in Germany.
The findings come as European governments debate how to strengthen their military capabilities amid Russia’s continued aggression and growing uncertainty over the United States’ commitment to European security.
GLOBSEC surveyed respondents in 14 countries across the transatlantic space, including 11 EU member states, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The enthusiasm for European military capabilities did not appear to be a rebuke of NATO. Some 77% of respondents in the NATO countries surveyed said they would vote to remain members, while 78% of respondents in the EU countries surveyed supported developing the bloc’s own defense capabilities alongside the alliance.
There was also strong support for the most direct form of contribution to national defense: a draft. Among respondents in countries without compulsory military service, 64% favored its reintroduction, according to the report, with the highest numbers found in Czechia, France, Germany and Slovakia.
German exception
Attitudes toward Washington revealed a growing transatlantic divide. More than one-third of respondents across the European countries surveyed now consider the United States a security threat. Around half of respondents in Germany, France and Britain held that view, compared with roughly one-third in Central and Eastern Europe.
Germany was the only country surveyed where a majority regarded Washington as a security threat.
The country also stands apart for attitudes toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some 40% of German respondents agreed with the claim that Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers justified the invasion, while 39% believed the West provoked the war.
Those views coincided with softer support for Kyiv. Just over half considered Ukraine’s fight important to German security, while nearly six in 10 would accept Ukrainian territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
The findings appear to highlight a political paradox — voters want a stronger European military, but remain committed to NATO even as confidence in its most powerful member erodes.
MADRID — Trailing in the polls ahead of Nov. 29 national elections, Spain’s ruling Socialist Party is turning to TikTok. Not to use it, but to try to ban it.
Following the publication on Monday of a Spanish investigation accusing TikTok of allowing child sexual abuse material, the youth ministry announced it would try to block the platform.
On Wednesday the prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary inquiry, prompting a triumphant post on X by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “Great news,” he wrote. “The days of impunity on social media are over. No platform is above the law, and much less above the rights of our children.”
The bombshell report by civil society group Maldita has shocked Spain and given the government a chance to show it’s tough on Big Tech just ahead of a momentous election, with polls showing the right firmly ahead.
Over the past 72 hours the government has pulled every available legal lever against TikTok, including lodging cases with both the Data Protection Agency and the public prosecutor’s office.
The reality that EU legal thresholds for shutting off open platforms are relatively high isn’t slowing the public onslaught. In a TV interview aired Monday after Maldita’s investigation was released, Sánchez cast his government as a bulwark against Big Tech. “If we have to suspend a social media platform in Spain, have no doubt that we’ll do so,” he said.
TikTok says the company moved quickly to identify and remove content after the Maldita report was published. “CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is categorically prohibited on our platform, and we deploy advanced detection technologies alongside a dedicated Child Safety Team to aggressively identify and eliminate it,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “As bad actors continuously adapt their tactics, we work tirelessly to improve our safeguards.”
Sánchez has every reason to turn the conversation toward protecting children and holding foreign tech companies accountable after sagging in the polls following last month’s train crash in Toledo that killed 69 people. The Socialist leader explained this week that his government was pushing to enforce the “criminal liability of the leaders of these platforms.”
Still, the points Sánchez is looking to score by targeting Big Tech may be limited because his main opponent also slammed TikTok for failing to act.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People’s Party and current favorite to be Spain’s next prime minister, met on Tuesday with Maldita’s team. “It’s shocking, and we can’t look the other way,” he wrote on X. “We have a duty to protect children, and this is one of my top priorities for families.”
Borja Sémper, a key PP lawmaker who attended the meeting between Feijóo and the investigative team, said: “What’s happening on TikTok is unacceptable. We’re not going to let this go.”
The Socialist Party has positioned itself as Spain’s toughest voice against the platforms, and Sánchez has made clashes with “techno-oligarchs” a key campaign calling card.
Spain’s right-wing People’s Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo looks on during the presentation of the PP’s election manifesto for the upcoming snap election during a meeting in Madrid on Nov. 10, 2026. | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
A spokesperson for Spain’s digital ministry pointed to the PP and the far-right Vox as partly responsible for the inaction over TikTok, given that they voted against the government’s designation of the National Markets and Competition Commission as the regulator of digital services. By rejecting the motion, the spokesperson said, they deprived the state of “the tools to protect our children.”
Earlier this week, Youth Minister Sira Rego asked the country’s data protection watchdog to suspend TikTok. “If it were up to us, TikTok would have been shut down from the very moment we learned of the investigation,” said a ministry official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the issue. “But we don’t have the authority to do so.”
The same official said the Ministry of Youth and Children had met with Spain’s TikTok team but hadn’t received a satisfactory response. “We asked them to voluntarily suspend their services in Spain,” the official said, adding the platform had only agreed to “look into it” without providing a timeline.
Bans are hard
The only way for the Spanish government to force a suspension of the service is to get a court order. The ministry has written to the State Attorney General’s Office to open an investigation that could lead to a suspension of operations, the official said.
In 2024, Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz ordered Telegram to be blocked for three days before reversing his decision, ruling that the measure wasn’t proportionate. The precedent is there, and shows that although a ban is possible, it is also unlikely.
The current Spanish push isn’t the first time a European government facing tough elections has floated suspending an online platform in response to illegal content.
Just last month, the French government touted the suspension of social media amid widespread protests, but a constitutional court partly struck it down, saying it wasn’t in line with French law. Back in 2025 the Albanian government banned TikTok for just over a year, citing concerns over violence among children, although opposition parties accused the administration of trying to stifle criticism ahead of general elections.
But the constitutions of EU countries and bloc-wide rules don’t easily allow such measures. Laws to regulate big online platforms like TikTok are harmonized across the EU, which significantly limits what Madrid can do alone.
The EU’s privacy rulebook, the General Data Protection Regulation, is enforced by national regulators. Ireland’s data protection authority oversees TikTok, which means the Youth Ministry’s request to Spain’s privacy regulator, the AEPD, is unlikely to go far.
The AEPD cannot impose a permanent TikTok ban in Spain, but it could trigger what’s known as an “urgency procedure” under the GDPR.
The emergency measure allows a privacy regulator to impose legally binding measures domestically that can last up to three months, where there is “urgent need to act” to protect people’s privacy rights.
The AEPD said that Ireland’s privacy regulator is the main authority responsible for TikTok’s compliance with privacy rules and said it will “share all available information with the Irish authority” and other European privacy regulators.
The regulator said it has asked Maldita for a list of links to alleged unlawful processing of minors’ data, and asked TikTok what it has done to take down the reported content.
TikTok’s wider content moderation practices are regulated by the Digital Services Act, which gives the European Commission oversight powers over big platforms. Brussels already has several probes open against TikTok and has said in preliminary findings that the Chinese-owned platform breaches the rules by failing to protect minors and by designing an addictive service, although it hasn’t issued any fines.
BRUSSELS—The European Union should have a plan to respond to serious artificial intelligence incidents, two EU countries said ahead of a key Friday meeting of national leaders focused on AI.
In a letter seen by POLITICO, Finland and Estonia say the bloc “can still compete at the frontier” of AI by mobilizing capital and building up compute power, but this should go hand in hand with “governing it responsibly.”
The two countries, considered among Europe’s digital leaders, call for “EU-level arrangements for responding to serious AI incidents.”
AI safety and security are on Friday’s agenda of the first-ever European Council meeting devoted to the revolutionary new technology.
Concerns about whether Europe is prepared to respond to AI-powered threats have been picking up steam since a series of incidents this summer in which AI agents went rogue and hacked into other companies. Recent cyberattacks and revelations of coding vulnerabilities have also raised concerns that security systems must be better equipped for the arrival of artificial intelligence.
Hungary pushed for a network of national contact points in case AI model providers lose control of their models, in an October paper seen by POLITICO. The country also pushed for a team of “pre-vetted, security-cleared” independent evaluators who can be ahead of incidents.
The letter from Finland and Estonia called for investment in European frontier AI models “as an economic priority and as a foundation for Europe’s influence on the future of AI.”
The countries warn that Europe requires “independent capacity to evaluate the most advanced models and their safety and security risks.”
BRUSSELS — You know that customer-service bot that won’t let you cancel your subscription? The EU wants to kill it.
With a new law presented Wednesday, the European Commission will take aim at the endless array of practices websites have used over the past 20 years to make more money from consumers.
The Digital Fairness Act is the European response to a wider regulatory trend that has seen consumer authorities curb irksome and exploitative practices. These include dynamic pricing that changes ticket prices based on demand, cumbersome processes for canceling subscriptions and the near-complete surrender of customer service to automated systems.
According to a draft of the DFA obtained by POLITICO, the Commission will address several aspects of the design, service and terms under which businesses interact with consumers online.
“Europe should not accept a digital economy where profits depend on exploiting people’s vulnerabilities,” Spanish socialist lawmaker Laura Ballarín Cereza, a key European lawmaker on tech legislation, said in a statement.
Industry leaders have pushed back on this potential new rulebook ever since the EU executive began considering a revision of consumer law in 2022. They say current consumer protection and digital services laws already cover these practices. “Where existing rules already cover a practice, it should not be regulated or enforced a second time,” said Ben Brake, director general of tech lobby DOT Europe.
Consumer groups say existing rules, some dating back to 2005, are not clear enough and that many unfair design practices are still rampant.
The Commission would have the power to impose fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue for companies that violate the new law. Those penalties are similar to fines levied under the Digital Services Act, the EU’s platform rules meant to stop Big Tech platforms from provoking systemic, society-wide harms through everything from election interference to keeping minors away from violent content. The new law instead would apply to any business offering services to EU consumers online.
Dark patterns
The DFA would ban deceptive design known as “dark patterns,” which manipulate consumers through the use of such tactics as bright-colored buttons placed prominently to get customers to buy something. It also aims to ban personalized pricing that targets vulnerable consumers, including minors.
The practice of dynamic pricing is also targeted in the law. That’s when a seller adjusts the price based on conditions such as demand or a user’s location, and it is commonly used in the sale of concert and airline tickets. The proposed law requires transparency when customers are buying products whose prices are subject to change.
The DFA also covers consumer rights around “agentic commerce,” when artificial intelligence agents are used to find and complete purchases.
Four lawmakers from the conservative, socialist and liberal groups said the requirement doesn’t go far enough and that the DFA should completely ban dynamic pricing for cultural and sporting events, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
Sellers offering subscriptions will have to provide an easy way to cancel, reminiscent of New York State’s “click to cancel” rules. The new EU rules also require that a human is available for after-sales customer support.
The rules also address, for the first time, specific aspects of online gaming, including bans on video games that allow kids to pay to succeed and progress in the game.
The DFA is also trying to make its mark on what is known as “addictive design” of online platforms. This has already been the target of enforcement action in Europe and litigation in the U.S. in cases involving minors. But the new consumer rules would apply to adults as well, requiring online platforms to offer an opt-out from addictive features like autoplay.
Spain’s Ballarín Cereza thinks this is not enough, saying users should be opted out of these features by default. “Why should consumers carry the burden when companies deliberately design these addictive mechanisms? We must shift from consumer responsibility to corporate responsibility: safety and fairness must be the default, not an option,” she said.
PARIS — Tehran denied accusations by Paris that it was behind the recent series of cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigerators in France, calling the claims “baseless and biased.”
The Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday that it “strongly condemns” France’s “worn-out policy of making accusations against Iran.”
French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot on Monday said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for the “unprecedented” cyberattacks against several supermarket chains last month. On Tuesday, Barrot said Paris would not “rule out anything” in its response to the attacks, which affected 700 food distribution sites.
“We’ll take all measures, including those we will not disclose publicly, which we ourselves consider proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks and punish those responsible for this unacceptable aggression,” he said.
Iran’s ambassador to France has been summoned to the foreign ministry after French prosecutors said that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.
According to French investigators, Iran’s cyber unit linked to the IRGC, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks.
The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.
“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.
On Monday, European Council President Kaja Kallas said that the topic of alleged Iranian hacks would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”
The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which European Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”
LISBON — The European Union should work “only with very trusted partners” on artificial intelligence microchips, its tech chief said Tuesday, just days after revelations of a spy scandal rocked industry leader Nvidia.
“When we speak about very critical technologies, like AI semiconductors and quantum technologies, cybersecurity, satellites … it’s very important that we are working very closely only with very trusted partners,” said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty. She made the comments in an interview with POLITICO at the Web Summit tech fair in Lisbon, when asked about Europe’s reliance on Nvidia.
It is Virkkunen’s first public comment since Nvidia opened an internal investigation into whether its CEO was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation. Top executive Jensen Huang admitted to an affair following a reported relationship with an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed whom the U.S. government believes is a Chinese spy.
Virkkunen did not detail whether she considered Nvidia less trustworthy since news of the spy scandal broke. When asked who she considers trusted partners, she described the U.S. as the EU’s traditionally “closest partner when it comes to security and technology,” suggesting the bloc has no intention of blaming the U.S. but would prefer to collaborate to plug the security gap.
In “limited areas of technologies,” it is important to ensure that “we don’t have that kind of technological leakages,” the EU tech chief said. “We want to really keep the business secrets in Europe.”
“It’s true that currently Europe is very dependent on AI chips on a few American companies and that’s why it’s important also that we are building up our own capacity to also design and also manufacture more advanced [chips] and also AI chips in the coming years,” Virkkunen said.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
PARIS — French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot said Iran was behind the recent series of “unprecedented” cyberattacks on refrigerators in several major supermarket chains in the country last month.
“Thanks to the outstanding work of the government departments, I am able to confirm that responsibility for this attack lies with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Barrot told reporters Monday at a G7 meeting in Paris. “We will impose sanctions at European level against those responsible.”
Barrot said that 700 food distribution sites in France were impacted in the cyberattack. French prosecutors said shortly after that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.
In a statement, a spokesperson for France’s foreign affairs ministry said the French investigation found that Iran’s cyber unit, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks. Shahid Kaveh, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, carries out offensive cyber operations.
The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.
“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.
“We just heard now that [the cyberattacks] were attributed to Iran,” European Council President Kaja Kallas said after Barrot’s statement, adding that the matter would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”
The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which EU Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”
Iran’s foreign affairs ministry and its embassy in Paris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is slated to visit Bulgaria and Romania next week, following a series of drone attacks on Black Sea vessels that have heightened security tensions along NATO’s eastern flank.
According to three European Commission officials familiar with the plans, von der Leyen is expected to travel to both countries before attending the COP climate summit in Turkey. “It’s now the deadliest shipping route in the world,” said one of the officials, who was granted anonymity to speak about security-related plans.
At least seven commercial vessels were reportedly struck by drones in the Black Sea last month, leaving two sailors dead and at least 25 missing. The attacks, which Romania blames on Russia, have brought the violence of the war in Ukraine dangerously close to NATO territory.
Romania has warned that the strikes are part of Moscow’s escalating aggression against Ukraine, while Bulgaria has stopped short of formally blaming Moscow, referring instead to drones coming from “an eastern direction.”
The security concerns reached Bulgaria’s shores Friday, when a local resident discovered a drone washed up near the coastal town of Shabla. The aerial vehicle appeared to have been carried ashore by the sea, said the municipality’s mayor, Mariyan Zhechev. The drone’s origin and whether it was connected to the recent attacks on commercial shipping have not been established.
It is unclear whether von der Leyen will be accompanied by anyone else such as European Council President António Costa or EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. In Bucharest on Monday she will meet with Romanian President Nicușor Dan and Prime Minister Luca Niculescu. On Tuesday, she will meet Bulgarian Prime Minsiter Rumen Radev in Varna and visit the Nikola Vapsarov Naval Academy.
The plans come as NATO allies step up surveillance over the Black Sea following the attacks on commercial shipping. Italian, British and American reconnaissance aircraft were spotted conducting simultaneous missions over the region Tuesday, according to Bulgarian broadcaster bTV, while France has extended the deployment of a maritime patrol aircraft in Romania.
The deteriorating security situation is also prompting diplomatic efforts to protect commercial shipping. Speaking at Saturday’s G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said India and Turkey had put forward proposals to help grain-carrying vessels navigate the Black Sea safely amid the continuing Russia-Ukraine war.
This article has been updated with details of Ursula von der Leyen’s itinerary in Romania and Bulgaria.
The U.S. government has scuttled a French push for the G7 to coordinate on advanced AI safety, with a White House official calling it “unnecessary bureaucracy.”
France’s digital minister Anne Le Hénanff told a French Senate hearing on Wednesday that she held two ministerial meetings in September and October to secure G7 commitments to a high-level working group to test frontier AI — the most advanced models — and share information about risks and incidents.
That effort “did not reach a successful conclusion” because the U.S. wanted to pursue its own approach, the French minister said.
“They are not prepared, at this stage, to issue a joint statement with the other six G7 nations, and have asked us to wait for the findings of their own assessment,” said Le Hénanff. “Naturally, we regret this, but we are continuing to move forward as Europeans on this issue.”
A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the French government proposed a “poorly defined body” to cooperate on AI that the administration feared would “create unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The official pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Super Intelligence Force, saying it brings government and industry together to accelerate innovation and ensure the safe deployment of models.
Digital Minister Anne Le Hénanff speaks in the French parliament in Paris on Oct. 28, 2026. | Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
France, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 for 2026, issued a chair’s summary statement after the Oct. 20 virtual G7 tech ministerial, which noted that ministers considered closer coordination on identifying risks and sharing incident information, as well as a dedicated high-level group. It was not a joint statement endorsed by all G7 members.
Trump began promoting “super intelligence” as a replacement for “artificial intelligence” at the U.N. General Assembly in late September. A week later, he ordered federal agencies to use the new term.
G7 ministers in May agreed to discuss secure AI and risk assessment, which was followed by the G7 leaders meeting the following month in Évian.
But the stakes have risen as advanced AI systems gain unprecedented cyber capabilities that can be used for both attack and defense. In July, Hugging Face disclosed an intrusion driven by an autonomous AI agent. OpenAI later said models used in an internal cybersecurity test had bypassed controls and compromised parts of its own research infrastructure and Hugging Face’s systems.
Le Hénanff said France would keep pushing the issue, citing INESIA, France’s national AI evaluation and safety institute, and Inria, its public research institute for digital science and technology, as resources for the work.
The White House official said: “Under President Trump’s leadership, America will continue to lead the world in SI innovation.”
France’s blood collection service confirmed that its refrigerators were hit by cyberattacks at the same time as supermarket fridges across the EU — though blood supplies were not affected.
The French Blood Establishment said Tuesday that monitoring and control systems for cold storage rooms deployed at three of its sites were affected, with temperature and defrosting thresholds raised to “very high levels.”
It was not the direct target of the cyberattacks and no blood samples or products were compromised, the EFS said.
The incident appears linked to a fresh wave of cyberattacks on supermarket refrigerators across Europe, which forced stores to throw out spoiled food. That wave came just weeks after French supermarkets were first hit by a cyberattack that also hit refrigerators.
French media reports said refrigeration company Coolworld is the supplier to EFS. The company said in a statement that it’s aware of the incident and that it “concerns a component supplied by a third-party provider and not directly controlled by Coolworld.” It said only a “limited number” of its units were affected.
In the attacks on supermarkets, refrigerator defrost settings were manipulated so the coolers reached very high temperatures, mirroring the EFS’s experiences. The blood stored in the affected equipment, which included plasma bags for transfusions, has been “transferred or secured,” the EFS said.
French digital minister Anne Le Hénanff said in the country’s Senate today that the recent attacks on the country’s refrigerators “have directly targeted our economy and our supply chain.”
“I would even go so far as to say that, beyond that, their objective may potentially be to undermine the unity of our country and to create anxiety among the population,” she said.
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