At least 25 commercial flights across Europe were disrupted by hoax bomb threats on Thursday alone, following seven diversions and searches on Tuesday. Simultaneously, supermarket refrigeration systems in seven countries — including the UK, Belgium, Sweden, and France — were remotely sabotaged, with thermostats cranked to 50°C. In France, the attack extended to cold storage at the national blood service. No group has claimed responsibility for either campaign. The flight disruptions arrived at a moment of heightened aviation anxiety, following the flydubai incident in which a pilot physically fought off a knife-wielding colleague apparently attempting to crash a passenger jet bound for Tel Aviv. Airlines receive bomb threats daily at rates that would alarm the public, according to the Guardian's defence editor Dan Sabbagh, but the volume and apparent coordination of this week's threats triggered credible-threat protocols across multiple carriers and countries. The fridge attacks represent a newer and more troubling vector. The hackers targeted Danfoss-controlled refrigeration systems — networked "edge devices" connected to the internet but lacking the processing power and security hardening of core IT infrastructure. One cybersecurity researcher told the Guardian the attacks on dummy Danfoss controls bore "all the hallmarks" of operations linked to Russia. The attack surface is vast: a European cybersecurity official estimated there is a vulnerability in every 1,500 lines of code, on average. This is the operational logic of grey-zone warfare. Since 2022, European states have experienced intensifying acts of sabotage believed to trace back to Russia but calibrated to fall below the threshold for military response — a shadow war designed to erode Western support for Ukraine. Two months ago, an alleged attack plot on RAF Fairford was organised by a handler police believe was working on behalf of Iran. MI5 currently monitors approximately 3,000 active subjects of interest, arranged in a threat hierarchy, but lower-level activity — online provocations, potential lone actors — is a resourcing question as much as an intelligence one. Tech expert Azeem Azhar has warned that the internet is experiencing its own "Wuhan moment," as AI enables bad actors to hunt for system flaws and exploit them at scale, mirroring the early exponential spread of Covid. The criminal hacking ecosystem is developing alongside state-directed operations, with some groups maintaining loose links to the Russian state. Finland, watching its neighbour closely, has seen reports to its national cybersecurity centre rise from 18,000 to 21,000 in a single year for a population of just 6 million. The UK government's own Be Ready initiative advises citizens to stockpile 72 hours of emergency supplies — water, non-perishable food — to offset the risk of hybrid warfare and hostile state sabotage. Governments across Europe are issuing similar guidance. As Sabbagh notes with dry precision: "If you're a government wanting to spend £10bn more on defence by the end of the decade, it's useful to have that message about keeping a few bottles of water at home." The threats are real, but the framing serves multiple masters. The structural problem is asymmetry. Disruption is cheap; defence is expensive and never complete. A lone disruptor or a state proxy can ground 25 flights with a phone call, or spoil tonnes of food and blood supplies with a remote thermostat hack. The psychological cost — the pervasive sense of vulnerability — is the product, not the side effect. As Sabbagh puts it: "Terrorism doesn't have to be violent to terrorise. The purpose of terrorism is to scare." The question is whether democratic societies can absorb this steady drip of low-grade chaos without either overreacting or becoming dangerously numb.
