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Cyberattack attempts to heat cold storage units at France’s main blood bank
No blood products were damaged or lost
Published
France’s main blood service has been hit by a cyberattack involving one of its refrigeration equipment providers, affecting cold rooms at three of its sites.
The incident, which took place on November 2, was confirmed to The Connexion by the Établissement français du sang (EFS).
It said that hackers managed to alter the monitoring and control systems used to manage the temperature and defrosting settings of the facilities.
The affected cold rooms are used to store blood products before they are distributed to healthcare facilities, as well as samples kept for the EFS's biological collections.
The changes caused temperature thresholds to be raised to very high levels, although its monitoring and alarm systems caught the anomalies quickly.
According to Le Canard enchaîné, hackers had attempted to raise temperatures in the refrigeration units to 110C.
However, when contacted by The Connexion, the EFS press office said it had not communicated any exact temperature figures and could not confirm them. It could only confirm that temperatures had indeed reached a high threshold.
No blood products lost
The EFS said no blood products or samples had been damaged and no losses had been reported.
Depending on the circumstances at the affected sites, the equipment was either brought under control or taken out of service. Products stored in the cold rooms were also transferred to other facilities as a precaution.
The plasma concerned included supplies intended for blood transfusions and plasma used in the manufacture of medicines.
The EFS said there had been no impact on patients and that its blood collection and distribution activities had continued without disruption.
Its technical teams are now working with the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI), France’s cybersecurity agency, and the Ministry of Health to address the incident.
It comes just weeks after a similar cyberattack in October that affected refrigeration systems at several French supermarkets. In that case, hackers remotely increased freezer temperatures, destroying frozen and chilled food stocks.
