France says Iran's Revolutionary Guards carried out October's fridge cyberattack and plans European-level sanctions, with no immediate comment from Tehran.
France on Monday attributed last month's cyberattack on supermarket refrigeration to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran and said it would pursue sanctions at the European level. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said, "I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran." He called it unprecedented in scale and aggressiveness and the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on French national territory. He said it targeted 700 sites. France has summoned Iran's ambassador, according to Egypt Independent. There was no immediate comment from Tehran.
According to AFP, the attacks took place on Oct. 11 and 12 and raised the temperatures in refrigerators, in some cases forcing supermarkets to throw away entire inventories of perishable food. Egypt Independent, citing BFMTV, reported that hackers connected remotely and switched on defrost cycles, and that some refrigeration equipment caught fire.
The Paris prosecutor's office opened a judicial investigation into the head of Shahid Kaveh, a cyber unit affiliated with the IRGC, and his two deputies. Egypt Independent reported the office cited the use of Farsi and IP addresses pointing to devices located in Iran. AFP reported that the cyber monitoring center of four French security agencies said the unit is better known as CyberAveng3rs.
Similar incidents have been reported elsewhere in Europe. AFP reported that on Nov. 2 grocery stores in at least nine other European countries were hit by a suspected cyberattack on freezer systems. Egypt Independent reported a similar attack on supermarkets in Sweden, Belgium and Ireland earlier this month, and said it is unclear whether those incidents are linked to the French one. No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, attending the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Paris, said the attribution did not surprise the US and that Iran has "done things like this for a very long time."
