The World Might Be Ending – Cyberattack in France Caused Hundreds of Supermarket Fridges & Freezers to Heat Up to 122°F, Resulting in Fires and Spoiled Food

NBC News – Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets to as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit overnight into Monday, causing fires and spoiling food.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said that a “large-scale” attack was “affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France,” leading to food losses and fires.

Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were hit, while Monoprix, which operates about 490 stores in France, said 5% of its stores were affected.

Les Mousquetaires, owner of retailer Intermarche, said fridges at around 150 of its stores were heated up to 50 C for six hours overnight. A spokesperson said all affected food had been discarded to eliminate health risks.

Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said 80 of its stores — out of an overall group total of 2,000 — were affected.

There was no immediate estimate of industry-wide losses, but Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard told BFM TV the “unprecedented” attack would represent losses amounting to “tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day.”

I'm sure I'm overreacting when I say this, but this is a Barstool Sports blog after all. I challenge you to find a single blog in the history of Barstool that doesn't feature at least one good overreaction. Most blogs are built on them. Without overreacting to things, this company would cease to exist. 

So this cyberattack on the grocery store fridges/freezers in France. It's the beginning of the end, isn't it? We're all about to die. This story could be the start of any "the world is ending" movie. It's the perfect kind of weird, mildly concerning thing that happens in one of the very first scenes. The protagonist wakes up at home. On his way out the door, we're introduced to his family. He kisses his wife. Pets his dog. Has a verbal tennis match with his sassy teenage daughter over applying for colleges. His daughter, who's clearly being played by a 23-year-old actress, but in the movie she's in high school. So you've gotta sit there the whole time and pretend like she's not this stacked model who's already on her 3rd plastic surgery, because you're not sure if that makes you a pedophile or something. Like seriously, they couldn't have just made that character a community college student? They HAD to have fucking Sydney Sweeney play a 16-year-old? That's weird, guys. 

Anyways... the protagonist has a perfectly pleasant ride to work, where he oversees a chain of Piggly Wigglys. It's the most normal day in the history of normal days. But when he gets to work, his fridges aren't working. The food has gone bad. It's a pain in the ass. Nobody can seem to fix it. They lose a shit load of inventory. Yada, yada, yada – it's a rough day at work. But he doesn't chalk it up to anything more than that. 

By the next morning, though, the whole town has no electricity. No WiFi. The AC is out, and the family lives in Florida, so Sydney Sweeney is now just fully naked in the living room. Soon enough, their cell phones don't have service. Oh shit. This is the plot to that goddamn Obamas movie, isn't it? 

Not a shot-for-shot remake, but it's not THAT far off. My point is, hacking into and turning off the fridges/freezers in hundreds of grocery stores across France is the perfect precursor to something bigger. The unnamed superpower of a country (which is always portrayed as... like if Russia and China teamed up and started speaking Arabic) took over the freezers just to show us what they could do. Just to show off. Next thing you know, it's something with the water supply. It's something with our cell towers. At this point, I bet any car manufactured after 2020 could be hacked and controlled remotely. Hell, people microchip their pets nowadays. Russchinarabia could have our pets eating our faces at the push of a button.

Losing a little bit of produce and frozen goods because some random hacker wanted to test his mettle is not a huge deal on its own. However... the Obamas did make that movie. 

But it's probably nothing. I mean, what would that family know about realistic cyberthreats to national security? This is just another Barstool Sports blogger overreacting for the sake of content. In 10 minutes, I'll be back to writing about an escaped zoo animal, or a couple of baseball fans fighting in the bleachers. Either way, it will be the WILDEST video you've ever seen. 

To be safe, though… watch out for white people in the meantime.