France Accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards of Hacking Supermarket Fridges, Seeks EU Sanctions

On the weekend of October 11 and 12, the temperature controls on thousands of commercial refrigerators and freezers in French supermarkets were overridden by hackers. Food spoiled. Some units reportedly heated up so far that they caught fire. By Monday of this week, France's foreign minister was publicly naming who he said was responsible: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Jean-Noël Barrot said the attacks were carried out by the IRGC and called them unprecedented in both scale and level of aggression. He said France would implement sanctions at the European level against those responsible, and that Iran's ambassador to France had been summoned to the foreign ministry.

The targets were refrigeration units in at least 350 supermarkets, including stores run by Carrefour, Monoprix, Intermarché and Coopérative U. In the aftermath, employees threw out boxes of perished meat and melted ice cream. One French supermarket owner told Reuters the damage could run to tens of millions of euros across the country.

French authorities have opened an investigation. The Paris prosecutor's office is examining a cyber unit affiliated with the IRGC known as Shahid Kaveh, and has requested international arrest warrants for the unit's leader and two deputies. The requests do not mean the warrants have been issued.

The attacks appear to have been relatively simple to carry out. Cybersecurity experts previously told Reuters that several of the affected refrigeration units were obsolete or running outdated firmware, which could have made them easier to access.

What French officials have not done is explain publicly how they tied the attacks to Iran. Reuters said it could not independently establish how authorities reached that conclusion. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment, and Tehran routinely denies carrying out malicious cyber operations. The announcement came shortly after Reuters reported that investigators privately suspected Iran was responsible.

The October incidents were followed this month by another wave of hacking that affected more than 100 establishments across Europe. That wave also reached refrigeration units used by French blood banks, forcing staff to move some blood supplies to other cold-storage facilities. It remains unclear whether the European incidents are linked to the French supermarket attacks. The repeated targeting of refrigeration has raised questions about who is behind it, amid wider concern over suspected Russian sabotage in Europe and cyber activity tied to the conflict involving the United States and Iran.

Similar trouble has surfaced in the United States. In August, refrigerators at no fewer than six military commissaries stopped working. Pentagon investigators are treating the malfunctions as a suspected cyberattack and are working with French officials. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the Pentagon considers Iran a suspect, though the investigation is ongoing, and it is unclear whether other suspects are being examined. On Monday the Pentagon said it was aware of speculation about a possible cyber incident but could not comment further for security reasons.

Reuters could not independently establish whether the American commissary failures, the French supermarket attacks and the later European incidents are connected. What to watch now: whether the EU moves on sanctions, whether the arrest warrants requested in Paris are issued, and whether the evidence behind the attribution is ever made public.