Hannaford supermarkets were still offline Monday, a week after Dutch owner Ahold Delhaize shut down its websites and apps following a “cybersecurity incident.”
The outage began the same day that cyberattacks disrupted supermarket refrigeration systems across France. A spokesperson for Hannaford, which operates 68 stores in Maine, said the company does not believe the issues are related. But some Hannaford locations have recently experienced refrigeration problems.
“The issue impacting some of our stores is specific to the refrigeration equipment itself, not other factors,” spokesperson Caitlin Cortelyou said in an email Monday.
About 700 French supermarkets experienced widespread food loss and some fires on Oct. 12, when hackers forced refrigeration units into continuous defrost cycles and set temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), according to The Associated Press.
Ahold Delhaize announced the same day that it had taken “some systems offline to help protect them” as “precautionary measures following (a) cybersecurity incident,” according to the company’s website.
The company said its stores — including Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, Delhaize in Belgium and Hannaford, Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Giant in the United States — would stay open while its websites and apps were offline.
On Monday, Ahold Delhaize announced that its European stores were back online and that e-commerce services at its U.S. stores “are expected to come back in the coming days.”
The company said it had no evidence that suggests any sensitive customer, associate or partner data was taken. It also didn’t note a connection to the cyberattacks on supermarkets in France.
“As the investigation is ongoing, we are not sharing further details that could compromise security measures or interfere with our response efforts,” the company said.
Based in Scarborough, Hannaford operates 188 stores across the Northeast and is Maine’s second-largest employer, with about 9,500 workers in stores from York to Fort Kent.
Hannaford confirmed Monday that it continued to experience a network issue affecting some services, including its website, mobile app, and Hannaford To Go pickup and delivery.
“This is related to a security issue within the network of our parent company, Ahold Delhaize,” Cortelyou said. “While we can’t comment on another company’s issue, we do not have any reason to believe the Ahold Delhaize matter is related to the issue impacting some French retailers.”
She noted that Hannaford stores remain open and continue to welcome customers, and that customers can continue to shop with the store online through Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats.
French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told Parliament last week that while the cyberattacks on refrigeration systems posed no risk to France’s food supplies, the attack “touches the heart of our food security,” AP reported.
