Pentagon probes overnight sabotage of food supply at 14 US military bases as hackers exploit global loophole

Which US president are YOU? Take Daily Mail's quiz and find out Published: 13:55 EDT, 2 November 2026 | Updated: 14:03 EDT, 2 November 2026 The Pentagon is investigating food supply sabotage at 14 US military bases, suspecting hackers of knocking out freezers.Fridges and freezers at commissaries, the on-base grocery stores run by the Department of Defense, were disrupted at six bases on one night in August, sources told Reuters. Researchers tracking the failures logged outage reports at as many as 14 bases. At one base the temperature inside the freezers was driven up through the night, and staff opened the doors in the morning to thawed, leaking stock.Fort Huachuca in Arizona broke the news to its shoppers on Facebook on August 26, writing that the commissary freezer 'went into defrost mode where it heated up all the food.'The Pentagon is working with US allies in Europe where a similar spate of overnight freezer attacks have struck at hundreds of grocery stores from Finland to France. The same sabotage hit Europe again this morning, when fridges and freezers in stores across at least seven countries were driven to 50C (122F) in the small hours. It is the second such cyber strike in three weeks. In Belgium more than 50 stores were targeted, while another dozen surfaced in Ireland, Estonia, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. A handful of smaller Swedish shops and a few outlets in Finland were also sabotaged. The Pentagon is treating the food storage failures as a hack. Investigators have not identified any suspects Six commissaries were hit in late August. Commissaries are the discount grocery stores where military families and retirees shop on base, not the dining facilities that feed soldiers living in barracksIn France, officials say 700 supermarkets lost their refrigeration earlier this month with no suspects in custody. The Pentagon said that a unit of Cyber Command, the military's cyber force, was 'working in close coordination with interagency and law enforcement partners.'Army CID's Cyber Field Office has joined the hunt and is talking to French police about the European outages. A defense official said the Defense Commissary Agency shifted stock to other temperature-controlled sites to limit the losses. The stores stayed open, with Naval Station Newport and Fort Irwin selling dry goods only while technicians worked.Commissaries are distinct from the mess halls that feed active-duty troops, and are used by service members, retirees and their families for buying discounted goods for their homes.A spokeswoman for Swedish chain ICA, said every affected store was wired to an external refrigeration control system supplied by the Danish manufacturer Danfoss, the same supplier targeted in France. This photograph shows empty refrigerators in a Delhaize supermarket in Boortmeerbeek, Belgium, on November 2 after the food cooling system was brought offlineThe six stores it lost ran on a 4G mobile connection rather than its upgraded 5G system, which left them more exposed. The chain said it does not know who attacked it.French finance minister Roland Lescure told Parliament that about 700 of the country's 10,000 supermarkets were hit, with fires breaking out as equipment overheated. He said there was no risk to French food supplies but that the attack touched the heart of the country's food security.