The most hacked country in Europe? Why is France the target of so many cyberattacks

Hundreds of French supermarket workers got a surprise when they opened on October 12 and found that, instead of being greeted by a gust of cold air when they tried to restock fridges and freezers, many were as hot as ovens.  

A hack targeting 700 stores across France breached temperature-control software, cranking the thermostat as high as 80°C (176°F) overnight, in some cases cooking food that had been left inside.   

Workers at branches of Intermarché, Coopérative U, Carrefour, Leclerc and Monoprix supermarkets had no choice but to throw away tonnes of spoiled food.    

The hack was unique: it marked "the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage" on French territory, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said, describing it as an attack of "unprecedented" scale. 

But it came in the wake of a series of large-scale cyberattacks that have hit French companies, public service providers and government departments.  

In the past five years, successful hacks have stolen data from the country's unemployment agency, immigration office, ministry of education, the national agency for identity documents and public hospitals.  

In the most recent attack on the government, the ministry of finance in August notified nearly 680,000 French taxpayers that their personal and tax information had been stolen and offered for sale online.  

French companies have also fallen victim to large-scale data theft, including major health insurers, banks, national chains, most mobile providers and the national airline AirFrance-KLM.  

The frequency and scale of the attacks have made France "the most heavily breached large jurisdiction in Europe", according to cybersecurity company UpGuard.  

'A high-value target'  

France is "unusually attractive" to hackers on several fronts, said Dennis-Kenji Kipker, research director and founder of the cyberintelligence.institute in Frankfurt.  

"France is not hacked because it is the weakest link. It is hacked because it is a high-value target with too many unlocked side doors," he said.  

Not only is the country a nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council, but it is also Europe's second-largest economy and a leading backer of Ukraine, making it a target for a range of political, economic and opportunistic attacks.  

Social unrest in France – such as the ongoing cost-of-living protests – may also give hackers reason to believe that attacks aiming to unsettle the public and destabilise the government will be effective.  

France attributed October's supermarket hack to an Iranian cyber unit affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, but such a visible, state-linked hack is relatively rare. 

"It is a somewhat different phenomenon from the everyday ransomware, data theft and fraud affecting organisations across Europe," said Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat research at cybersecurity company Sophos.  

Yet, France is still subject to ransomware, data theft and fraud attacks as well – such as a November heist that saw cybercriminals steal more than €100 million from French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa.  

The layered appeal of France as a target could also bring hackers together to stage attacks, increasing their likelihood of success.   

"Most of the time hackers have their own specialties," said Sadiq Sani, associate professor in Cybersecurity at the University of Greenwich in London. "But it's a community where they share with their peers and sometimes need the support of other hackers to be able to carry out a sophisticated hack."  

'France was where it started, not where it ends'  

The potential rewards for attacks in France are high as it is "a highly centralised state, so one break-in at a health software supplier or the national job agency yields millions of records at once", Kipker said.  

But France is by no means Europe's only target for hackers – and is, by some measures, not the largest.  

"Over the last year, for example, we’ve seen ransomware groups [which use malware to hold systems hostage until users pay a sum of money] list more victims in Germany and Italy than in France," Pilling said.  

And Ukraine is the European country where customers are most frequently impacted by cyber threats, according to Microsoft's 2026 Digital Defence Report.  

Visible attempts at destabilisation have also targeted other countries. The Polish energy grid was targeted by a largescale – but unsuccessful – attack attributed to Russia in December 2025, prompting the EU and UK to impose their first joint cyber sanctions.  

Even France's fridge attack was replicated in November in Belgium, Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia and Sweden.  

"France was where it started, not where it ends," said Kipker. "The techniques travel, so the scale will too. There are thousands of insecure industrial control systems throughout the EU."  

Watch moreWhat the hack? Europeans face growing psyops and cyberattacks

This is despite the EU allocating billions to cybersecurity protections for member states (with France being the second-highest recipient after Poland), meaning that "by default, France has a very good level of security in terms of their infrastructure", Sani said.   

"However, even if you have the most secure infrastructure, there are still all these loopholes which attackers could exploit to attack the country at large."  

EU ready for 'united response' after France blames Iran for fridge hacks

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'Basic cybersecurity measures'  

Among such loopholes are outdated services, zero-day vulnerabilities (hidden technical flaws that are unknown to vendors), and risks involving third-party suppliers such as Danfoss, the Danish engineering firm that provided refrigeration management systems to France's hacked supermarkets.  

Danfoss said most of the attacks, which breached software allowing retailers to manage their cold units remotely, targeted out-of-date products that no longer receive software or security updates. It advised customers to keep systems and products updated. 

Such oversights are somewhat common. "Many companies and public authorities are successfully attacked not because they have been specifically spied on over a period of months, but because it is relatively easy to do so, owing to a lack of basic cybersecurity measures," said Kipker.  

In 2022, the EU introduced its flagship cybersecurity legislation, the NIS2 Directive, placing the onus on public and private organisations in key sectors to prove that their cybersecurity controls work in practice – but France has yet to implement the plan.

"France must now urgently catch up in the race between cyber defenders and cybercriminals, and hold both operators and manufacturers in the digital supply chain more strictly to account," Kipker added.  

With cyberattacks increasing globally as attackers use AI to scale up operations, the security challenges are becoming "more urgent", Pilling said, and hacks look likely to remain a fact of life.  

After the fridge attacks, the EU's cybersecurity chief on Tuesday warned that home appliances could be next.  

Even so, "the basics of good cyber hygiene still prevent a great deal of opportunistic cybercrime", Pilling said.  

"Accepting the occasional breach is not the same as accepting the damage," added Kipker. "The realistic goal is that an intrusion at a supplier stays an incident and never turns into a blackout, a spoiled supermarket or a leaked medical file."