Cyberattack reprograms blood cold rooms in France to reach 110°C
An on-call technician detected the failure and no blood bags were lost, according to the EFS; the attack hit contractor Coolworld and is under investigation by the French government.
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.
Cold rooms that store blood supplies for France's public health system were targeted by a cyberattack on Monday (2), g1 reported. The incident hit a refrigeration service provider for the Établissement Français du Sang (EFS), the agency responsible for collecting and distributing blood in the country, and affected supervision and control systems at three regional units.
According to the weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which revealed the case on Tuesday (3), the company attacked was Coolworld. According to the publication, equipment that keeps donor samples at -30°C was programmed to reach 110°C. The cold rooms also stored plasma bags used in transfusions and in the manufacture of medicines.
The EFS confirmed that Coolworld handled the affected systems and said there was no loss of blood products and no health impact identified as of Wednesday (4). The failure was noticed by an on-call technician, which allowed a quick response. The office of Health Minister Stéphanie Rist credited the preservation of supplies to alarm systems and immediate precautionary measures.
Steps taken include disabling remote access to the equipment, stepping up monitoring and moving the material to other units. Technical investigations are continuing to clarify the circumstances, determine how many devices were hit and decide when the systems will be restored.
According to g1, the episode comes shortly after an attack on refrigerators and freezers at supermarkets in about a dozen European countries and three weeks after a similar incident in France itself.