France accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards of supermarket fridge hack
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot says Paris will pursue EU sanctions and has summoned Iran's ambassador over the October attack on cooling software.
France's foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said on Monday that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the cyber-attack that raised temperatures in supermarket refrigeration units across France last month, and that Paris would seek European sanctions against those responsible.
Barrot called the incident "unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression" and "the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory", describing it as "a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people". He said Iran's ambassador to Paris had been summoned to receive "a very strong protest against this extremely grave act", and that France would take "any other necessary and proportionate measures" to deter anyone who might repeat it.
Iran has not responded to the accusation. The French government has not said how it reached its conclusion that the IRGC was responsible. Attribution of cyber-attacks is difficult because hackers can hide their locations.
On 11 October, according to the French account, hackers gained control of software made by the Danish engineering firm Danfoss that lets retailers regulate the temperature of cold units remotely. More than 100 stores of the Coopérative U chain were affected, along with 180 Intermarché and Netto outlets. Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc were also hit. In some stores the temperature inside fridges rose to 50C (120F) overnight, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros.
Earlier this month a second wave struck more than 100 stores in seven other European countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland. It is not known whether the two rounds are linked.
Also on Monday, the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said an investigation had been opened into the head of an offensive cyber unit associated with the IRGC and his two deputies. She named the unit as Shahid Kaveh, which she said was affiliated with the electronic and cyber centre of the Revolutionary Guard.
Two Russian-aligned hacktivist groups claimed responsibility on Wednesday, a claim the BBC reported few people believed.
Reuters reported that French prosecutors had opened a separate investigation into the supermarket hacking.
How the reports differ
Sky News called it a "massive cyberattack" and its headline blamed Iran alone, while France 24 and the BBC named the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps specifically as the accused, the BBC quoting Barrot's description of the first large-scale sabotage attack on French soil. Euronews led on Barrot saying the investigation was still under way and that Iran's ambassador would be summoned, details the other headlines did not carry. The BBC alone reported that the Paris prosecutor had opened a probe into a named IRGC-linked unit and two deputies, and that two Russian-aligned hacktivist groups had claimed responsibility. Al Jazeera's headline framed the target as "European fridges", broader than the French stores the minister described.
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