France blames Iran for supermarket fridge cyberattack
Paris says the October sabotage that heated refrigeration units in about 700 stores was the Guards' work. It wants three commanders arrested and will push EU sanctions.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on Monday blamed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the sabotage that cut the cold chain at about 700 French supermarkets on the night of Oct. 11-12. "I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Guard Corps," he said.
The attackers reached the refrigeration controllers remotely and raised the temperature while the stores were closed. Some units hit 50 °C (122 °F). Food spoiled, equipment was damaged and a few stores had small fires. Loss estimates run from millions to tens of millions of euros, with no official total.
In Paris, prosecutor Laure Beccuau is running a judicial investigation and has asked for international arrest warrants for the head of Shahid Kaveh, a cyberwarfare unit tied to the Guards, and his two deputies. She pointed to the use of Farsi, IP addresses linked to equipment in Iran and a method typical of that unit.
Barrot called it "cyber sabotage of unprecedented scale and aggressiveness" on French soil. France's national cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, keeps a roundup of sabotage and destabilization campaigns against French interests that it ties to Iran.
The accusation covers the October attack only. Similar failures in early November at chains in Belgium, Sweden, Ireland and Estonia, which we reported, still have no named culprit. Iran has not responded; it routinely denies cyber operations.
There is no direct effect in Mexico, and no reports of a similar attack there. Any business with internet-connected refrigeration can take note: CERT-FR, France's incident response team, advises taking the controllers off the internet.
Iran's ambassador in Paris has been summoned. France will propose sanctions at the European level, and Barrot reserved other retaliatory measures, public or not.
