ENISA warns household appliances could be cyberattack targets

Juhan Lepassaar, executive director of the Athens-based European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), warned on Tuesday 10 November 2026 that, following attacks on supermarket refrigerators, household appliances could be the next targets of cyberattacks: “Today it was refrigerators, tomorrow it could be routers, the day after tomorrow household appliances.”

The director called on Europe to invest more in tackling digital threats and argued that security should be incorporated from the design stage of connected products. In his view, incidents can be prevented, although protection requires investment.

Recent attacks and essential services

During October and November, supermarkets in several European countries were targeted in attacks; France was the worst affected. A vulnerability in PHP also prompted numerous EU governments to take their websites offline to prevent it from being exploited.

Lepassaar did not comment on Iran’s alleged responsibility for the attack on refrigeration systems. He did say that actors linked to the Iranian or Russian states target Europe and cooperate with one another; he also mentioned actors aligned with China and North Korea among those seeking to attack European interests.

The director warned that the services people depend on contain digital elements that can be hacked if they are not protected. Among the most serious scenarios, he cited the disruption of essential services, such as the police, fire services, hospitals and transport.

Artificial intelligence accelerates attacks and defence

ENISA’s report says that artificial intelligence expands and accelerates the capabilities of both attackers and organisations looking for vulnerabilities to protect themselves. The agency says the time between discovering a flaw and using it for an attack is approaching zero.

Cutting-edge AI can also shorten response times and the time it takes to release patches, allowing companies to check for and fix flaws before they are exploited. At the same time, it enables more convincing phishing operations using fake videos, audio recordings and messages to deceive people and introduce false data into corporate systems.

Motives behind incidents and ransomware

The report attributes an ideological motive to 57.3% of cyber incidents in 2025, linked to events such as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East. Most had a limited impact.

Another 29.3% were financially motivated. ENISA considers ransomware to remain the most damaging type of attack for businesses and warns that the sharing of these and other malicious tools fuels a professional criminal ecosystem.

By volume, hacktivists dominate the agency’s statistics, mainly through low-impact distributed denial-of-service attacks. ENISA has also detected operations resembling those of state actors that seek to carry out cyberespionage and intellectual property theft in European countries.

European regulation and a shortage of professionals

The NIS2 Directive requires economic sectors to implement digital safeguards to protect critical infrastructure. It began to apply in October 2024, although it has not yet been incorporated into the legislation of every member state.

The Cyber Resilience Act, adopted in 2024, will be fully applicable in December 2027. It imposes security obligations on manufacturers of products with digital components and provides for reporting through a single portal to speed up information sharing and coordination.

The Cyber Solidarity Act created the European Cybersecurity Alert System, the Cybersecurity Emergency Mechanism and the EU Cybersecurity Reserve. Lepassaar also mentioned European projects to double ENISA’s size and resources.

In the 2025 NIS investments study, 45% of the organisations surveyed said they had difficulty finding professionals with the necessary skills. ENISA is calling on member states to expand activities and strengthen European cybersecurity programmes to address the shortage.