France has formally blamed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for a cyberattack that disrupted refrigeration systems at about 700 supermarkets and shops across the country last month, according to WHRO and Cybernews. The French government announced the attribution on Monday 9 November.
According to France's National Cybersecurity Agency, ANSSI, Iranian military hackers took over refrigeration controllers at around 700 retail sites, from supermarkets to butcher shops, turning up the temperature in the middle of the night and spoiling food, WHRO reports. The attacks struck on 11 and 12 October, and Cybernews reports they also caused around 20 fires.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the attack was unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression and called it a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people, according to the BBC reporting cited by Khabarwire. Paris has said it will summon Iran's ambassador, seek European Union sanctions and pursue punitive measures.
The Paris prosecutor's office has opened a judicial investigation into the head of the cyber unit Shahid Kaveh, which French investigators link to the Revolutionary Guard's electronic and cyber centre, along with his two deputies, according to WHRO and Cybernews. Investigators have named three Iranian suspects and requested international arrest warrants.
Readers should note what is not yet public: France has not published the intelligence behind its attribution, and the New York Times reported, citing three sources, that US intelligence agencies held a low confidence assessment that Iran was responsible, according to Cybernews. Russian hacktivists claimed responsibility for similar refrigeration attacks across Europe last week, and a second wave in early November hit more than 100 stores in seven European countries — but French officials have tied only the French case to Iran so far.