Pentagon Investigates Suspected Hack Behind Military Store Freezer Failures

The Pentagon is treating the refrigeration failures that spoiled food at U.S. military grocery stores in August as a suspected cyberattack, according to a new report, while investigators examine similar outages in France.

Four officials familiar with the matter told Reuters that a possible hack is being investigated. The news concerns the investigation into the August failures, not a new wave of outages.

The Pentagon said a Cyber Command unit was working with interagency and law enforcement partners. The Army Criminal Investigation Division confirmed that its Cyber Field Office was involved and was working with French law enforcement to better understand refrigeration outages in Europe.

Reuters said it could not establish how far the investigation had progressed, whether investigators had reached a conclusion, or who might have been responsible. A cyberattack has not been publicly confirmed as the cause of the U.S. incidents.

Contemporaneous military announcements described refrigeration problems at multiple commissaries, the on-base grocery stores used by service members, families and eligible retirees. Some stores temporarily limited sales to dry goods, while officials moved products to other temperature-controlled locations.

In at least one August incident, Fort Huachuca said its freezers entered defrost mode overnight and spoiled the frozen food. Investigators' contact with France follows a separate attack on commercial refrigeration systems there that raised temperatures and damaged food.

The possible connection remains under investigation. Reports of similar behavior do not establish that the U.S. and French incidents shared an attacker or the same equipment.