FRANCE – A cyberattack on several blood banks tried to raise temperatures to extremely high levels but was thwarted before it could do any damage to blood products or samples.
The incident comes after supermarkets in a number of European countries reported this week that their fridges and freezers warmed up after they were remotely taken over, resulting in tons of spoiled food at a total cost of millions of dollars.
The French blood establishment, or EFS, said “temperature and defrosting thresholds were raised to extremely high levels” at three of its cold-storage sites for plasma.
Monitoring systems quickly detected the problem, allowing staff to take action in time so that “no blood products or samples were compromised.”
