Hacked Fridges and the Gap Between Your Insurance Policies
By Jasmin Gabrielli
In mid-October 2026, hackers got into the refrigeration systems of hundreds of supermarkets across France. Overnight, fridges and freezers at more than 300 Intermarché and Netto stores, and at Carrefour, Monoprix and Coopérative U sites, were pushed as high as 50 degrees Celsius. Food was thrown out, fires broke out in several stores and Intermarché’s chief executive estimated the losses could reach tens of millions of euros in a single day.
It happened in France, but the same equipment is used here. Many cool rooms, freezers, chillers and air conditioning systems in Australian businesses are now monitored and adjusted remotely, often by the company that services them. That convenience opens a new way for things to go wrong, and the claim that follows rarely sits neatly inside one policy.
Who should pay attention
Any business whose refrigeration or climate control is connected to the internet or managed remotely. That includes restaurants and cafes, supermarkets and IGAs, cold storage and logistics, food and beverage manufacturers, wineries, pharmacies and florists.
Why the claim can fall between policies
When a fridge fails, most owners think of machinery breakdown cover. When a computer system is attacked, they think of cyber cover. A hacked refrigeration controller is both, and that is where the trouble starts.
Machinery breakdown and deterioration of stock cover commonly excludes loss caused by a cyber attack or a malicious act. A modern refrigeration controller is effectively a small computer, so a hack can fall within those exclusions.
Business interruption cover usually needs insured damage to trigger it. If the damage itself is excluded, the loss of income often goes with it.
Many cyber policies respond to the attack, the investigation and the downtime on your systems, but exclude physical damage and spoiled stock.
If the hack happens at your refrigeration provider rather than in your own systems, a cyber policy may only respond if it has an extension for outsourced service providers.
Every policy is different, and some respond to parts of this. The point is not to assume.
What it could look like
These examples are illustrative only. How any policy responds depends on the facts and the wording.
Restaurant. The cool room controller is hacked on the Friday night of a long weekend. Staff arrive on Tuesday to $35,000 of spoiled stock, a cool room that needs a new compressor and a kitchen that stays closed for four days.
Cold storage. The temperature monitoring provider is breached and every site it manages warms up overnight. The business is holding a warehouse full of its customers’ stock and faces claims from those customers.
Food manufacturer. The blast chillers are tampered with and product leaves the line at an unsafe temperature. A recall follows, then a food safety investigation and lost contracts.
Pharmacy. The vaccine fridge is switched off remotely. The pharmacy loses its stock and the sales and profit that went with it.
Each of these could touch three policies, and each policy could point to another.
What you can do now
Ask your refrigeration and air conditioning provider who can access your systems remotely and how that access is secured.
Check that your controllers run current firmware and are not reachable directly from the internet.
Fit a standalone temperature alarm that does not rely on the same controller. Security researchers showed in August 2026 that some controllers could be made to stop cooling while staff screens still showed normal temperatures.
Keep stock records up to date so a loss can be shown quickly.
The equipment running quietly in the back of a business can also be a way in. Cover for this kind of loss is not automatic, and the gaps are easy to miss until a claim is made. If your business relies on refrigeration or climate control, let us know and we can look at how your machinery breakdown, business interruption and cyber policies would work together.
Jasmin Gabrielli
Director & General Manager, Sage Insurance
Jasmin is an experienced insurance professional with over 11 years of general broking expertise across a diverse range of general and hard-to-place specialty lines specifically in commercial applications.
This article is general information only and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Please speak with your broker about your specific circumstances.
