A cyberattack overnight Sunday disrupted refrigerators at hundreds of French supermarkets, according to retailers and French media. 

Fresh food spoiled at stores run by some of the country’s largest grocery chains after attackers remotely triggered the units’ defrost function.

French broadcaster BFMTV reported that about 300 Intermarché and Netto stores and fewer than 100 Coopérative U stores were affected.

“I confirm that a cyberattack has been affecting, since last night, the cold production facilities of several stores in our network” said the Coopérative U chief executive Dominique Schelcher.

“Our teams are fully mobilized, in coordination with refrigeration specialists, to restore the situation as quickly as possible,” he added.

“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” said Schelcher. “It is unacceptable.”