Hot fridges, a fake nuclear alert and a $6bn heist: are we in the foothills of a hacking epidemic?

Hackers caused commercial refrigeration units at retailers in several European countries to overheat on Monday, according to reporting in the Guardian. Alex Pearce, who runs a fruit and vegetable wholesale business in London, said he noticed a defrost light on refrigeration units 2 and 4 showing a panel reading of 150C. He pulled the unit's internet cable after suspecting a cyber-attack. Retailers in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden reported similar problems, with some fridges and freezers reaching as high as 50C.

Pearce said: "If it had happened on a Saturday morning, when I don't tend to be here, it could ultimately have led to a fire."

The report also describes two other incidents. On 30 October, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, lost $6.3bn in a record heist. On 1 November, hackers sent people in Kyiv a fake nuclear strike alert through Ukraine's emergency alert app.

Richard Horne, head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said the country is in the "foothills" of a new hacking landscape. He said flaws exposed by AI technology give attackers many vulnerabilities to exploit. "The most serious risk we face in the short term is just a huge rise in the volume of incidents," he said.

The report says at least one expert has linked the fridge attacks to Russia. It attributes the Binance hack to the North Korean state. It states that Russia is a suspect in the Ukraine incident.

The NCSC said last week that AI-powered malicious software is "highly likely" to be used against UK power stations, airports and hospitals by 2028. Paul Chichester, the NCSC's director of operations, said the fridge hackers "really didn't need" AI to find their flaws. He said default access passwords were published in one fridge operating company's manuals.

Ciaran Martin, the NCSC's founding chief executive, rejected comparisons to a "Wuhan moment." He said: "It's a bad run, but it's not unprecedented." Danfoss, a Danish firm whose systems were affected, said most of the affected equipment was old and no longer received security updates.