Iranian Hackers Spoil Food at U.S. Bases and Global Supermarkets

Resident shoppers at U.S. military commissaries and supermarkets across Europe have faced spoiled food and operational delays after hackers targeted industrial refrigeration systems. The attacks, which began in Israel in May 2026, have expanded to include American military bases in August and French supermarkets in October.

Omri Segev Moyal, head of the Israeli incident response firm Profero, identified the attackers as the Iranian military hacking group Cyber Isnaad Front. Moyal stated that forensic data and direct claims from the hackers support this attribution. The group had previously been linked to influence campaigns targeting U.S. elections in 2024.

The initial attack on a large food production plant in Israel forced operations to halt for over a week. Engineers found broken compressors and spoiled inventory after the hackers manipulated industrial controllers. Moyal described the damage as destructive, noting that the compressors were blown up due to overuse rather than conventional explosives.

Hackers adjusted safety limits, opened gas pressure valves, and disabled alerts during the Israeli incident. They also destroyed forensic evidence in the middle of the night. Moyal said the attackers used AI to rapidly test system configurations, a speed he described as almost magical compared to human capabilities.

The attacks have since spread globally. Unidentified hackers targeted food stores in Sweden, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium in early November. These incidents included big box retailers like IKEA. Moyal observed that the attacks appear to be a trend that started in Israel and was tested in Europe and the U.S.

In the United States, the Pentagon described a possible refrigeration disruption at multiple Defense Commissary Agency locations in August. At least nine locations reported outages, according to social media posts and independent confirmations. The Pentagon has not officially acknowledged hackers as the cause, but investigators are treating the outages as a cyberattack.

Two former officials who requested anonymity said evidence points toward Iran, though confidence in the attribution is not yet high. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service is partnering with the Army Criminal Investigation Division and French law enforcement to investigate the incidents.

Public contracting documents show that several U.S. commissaries, including Fort Irwin in California and Fort Huachuca in Arizona, operate Danfoss refrigeration remote control systems. These specific models have been identified by French officials and cybersecurity experts as vulnerable. Some of the units in use date back to the mid-2000s and can no longer receive secure software updates.

Fort Huachuca posted on Facebook that its commissary experienced an overnight equipment failure that put all freezers into defrost mode. A moderator on the post clarified that there was no power outage and that the defrost mode heated up all the food. The account noted that the food was spoiled. Fort Irwin stated that technicians were working around the clock to repair the systems.