Europe’s Week of Security Threats Hit Supermarkets, Blood Banks and Passenger Flights

The settings on equipment that keeps plasma frozen at three French blood banks were disrupted last week. Alarms gave staff time to intervene, and France's national blood service said no products or samples were compromised.

At a Stockholm supermarket that same day, the damage was already done by the time employees discovered the problem. A store manager said the freezers had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Those two incidents on November 2 opened a week in which suspected bomb hoaxes diverted passenger flights and security threats disrupted broadcasters. Authorities have yet to publicly identify who was behind the wave of incidents or establish whether they were connected.

The refrigeration hacks affected dozens of stores, including outlets operated by Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt in Belgium and Luxembourg and by ICA and Coop in Sweden. The attacks followed a similar incident at French supermarkets in October.

Fredrik Blix, a cybersecurity specialist at Stockholm University, told CNBC that some refrigeration controls were accessible from the public internet and protected by default or easily guessed passwords.

In France, the hackers targeted a refrigeration contractor that served the national blood service, Euronews reported. Collection and distribution continued as usual. The incident showed how access through an outside supplier could threaten medical supplies, and how much depended on staff detecting and reversing the changes before the plasma warmed.

In the air, Eurocontrol recorded threats against seven flights on Tuesday and 14 on Thursday. The European Union's transport commissioner reported 11 more on Friday. Hungary scrambled fighter jets to escort three passenger planes through its airspace within an hour.

No suspicious items were found, and no injuries were reported. In Dublin, Irish public broadcaster RTÉ evacuated its headquarters and switched to prerecorded programming. Britain's Sky News stayed on air after receiving a security threat.

Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told CNBC that if Russia were responsible, the disruption could be intended to make European leaders feel the costs of supporting Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied involvement. "These are stupid accusations. They are baseless," he told CNBC. Blix said the ease of exploiting exposed equipment also made opportunistic hacking a plausible explanation for the refrigeration incidents.

The security incidents unfolded amid political and economic strains. Public sector workers in France struck Thursday after weeks of demonstrations over living costs and public services. Reuters reported that the marches were largely peaceful, with some clashes in Paris and Lyon.

Alexander Anderson of the Centre for International Security and Economic Strategy told CNBC that foreign influence operations can amplify political divisions and warned against attributing legitimate grievances to outside interference.

Europe has plans to improve its response. After damage to energy and communications cables in the Baltic Sea, NATO launched Baltic Sentry in 2025, deploying ships and patrol aircraft to help protect undersea infrastructure.