UK meat processing industry hit by cyberattacks, security official says

Cyberattacks have affected the UK meat processing industry, although the impact has been minimal, a senior National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) official said on Tuesday.

Paul Chichester, the NCSC’s director of operations, said the organization was working with the businesses affected following cyber incidents targeting the sector.

His remarks came amid a series of cyberattacks on supermarkets across Europe, including in Ireland and France, where hackers targeted refrigeration systems, causing temperatures in fridges and freezers to rise and food to spoil.

Speaking at the launch of the NCSC’s annual report, the agency’s director, Richard Horne, said the attack in France involved legacy technology connected to the internet and protected by default passwords.

Horne told reporters after his speech that Britain’s intelligence agency GCHQ had been working through the night to contact UK organizations vulnerable to similar attacks, according to a report by Sky News.

On Monday, suspected cyberattacks targeting refrigeration systems affected food businesses across eight European countries, causing food losses and prompting a criminal investigation in Belgium.

Incidents were reported in Sweden, Belgium, Estonia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark, while Finnish retailers were investigating whether overnight temperature irregularities were linked.

UK faces growing threat of AI-powered cyberattacks

Horne warned that decades of underinvestment in technology had left the country vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

He said the UK had done "tech on the cheap,” warning that existing vulnerabilities could now be exploited on an unprecedented scale.

"Vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long can now be discovered and exploited at a scale that was once unimaginable," said Horne.

The NCSC found that hackers demanding ransom payments are "highly likely" to use artificial intelligence to target the UK by 2028.

It also warned that hostile states are expected to routinely use AI to pursue their objectives by the same year.

Horne warned businesses that failure to address cybersecurity weaknesses could have serious consequences, saying they may eventually have to explain why they ignored the warning signs amid empty supermarket shelves and power blackouts.

The government announced Tuesday that thousands of micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses in the UK will benefit from a 75% discount on government-backed Cyber Essentials certification to help protect them against cyber threats.