Iran was behind the hacking attack on French commercial refrigerators and freezers last month, according to the French authorities.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said ‘there will be consequences’ following the attack, adding that the state would impose sanctions against Iran.
The October 11 cyberattack, which overrode the temperature controls on commercial fridges in hundreds of establishments, appeared to have been easy to pull off, cybersecurity experts previously told Reuters.
The firm behind many of the stricken units said that several were obsolete or were running outdated firmware, which could have made it easy for hackers to break in.
The effects were still dramatic. Some refrigerators had the temperature turned up so high they caught fire.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the cyberattack showed a methodology characteristic of the ‘Shahid Kaveh Group’, an elite offensive cyber unit believed to work in the service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
It has requested international arrest warrants against the leader of the group, as well as his two deputies.
An investigation into the fridge hacks showed the use of Farsi, and IP addresses pointed to devices located in Iran.
Cyber attackers hacked hundreds of supermarkets across France and defrosted their freezers last month
The attackers programmed the refrigeration systems to blow hot air at 50C causing temperatures inside the fridges to reach 36C, meaning a huge quantity of produce had to be thrown away
Barrot said the Iranian ambassador had been summoned to the foreign ministry.
In the hours following the hack, supermarket employees carted boxes full of perished meat and melted ice cream into giant trash containers.
The attack’s total costs could add up to tens of millions of euros nationwide, one French supermarket owner estimated.
The hacks were followed this month by a second wave of hacking that hit more than 100 establishments across Europe and even affected refrigerators used by French blood banks, prompting employees there to have to move some of the blood to different cold storage units.
The seemingly straightforward nature of the refrigerator hacks — and their repetition across multiple countries — prompted speculation about who might be responsible amid ongoing concerns over Russia’s suspected sabotage campaign in Europe, the war between the US and Iran and the global rise of AI-powered cyberattacks.
The sabotage of European supermarket fridges was preceded by at least one similar incident in the United States.
In August, refrigerators in at least half a dozen military commissaries went out of commission.
Pentagon investigators are treating the malfunctions as a suspected cyberattack and are working with French officials to get to the bottom of what happened.
A person familiar with the matter said that the Pentagon considers Iran a suspect in the August commissary hacks but that the investigation is still in progress.
The Pentagon said on Monday that it is ‘aware of speculation regarding a potential cyber incident’ but that military investigators were on the case and it could not offer further comment for security reasons.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
