France accuses Iran of hacking supermarket fridges

France's foreign minister has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps of being involved in "unprecedented" cyberattacks targeting supermarket fridges last month, vowing to hit Tehran with sanctions in response.

Swathes of French supermarkets were hit in the October 11 and 12 cyberattacks, which raised the temperatures in their refrigerators, in some cases forcing them to throw away entire inventories of perishable food.

"I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said of the cyberattacks.

"This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression," he said on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministries' meeting in Paris.

The Paris prosecutor said in a separate statement she had opened an investigation into Shahid Kaveh, a shadowy cyber unit of the IRGC, the Islamic republic's ideological army, over the attacks.

"It marks the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory, and it constitutes a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people," said Barrot.

"We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible," he added.

Reza Sayah reports from Tehran

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Other countries hit

Barrot only directly referred to attacks against French supermarket systems, which he said targeted 700 sites.

However, similar incidents have been reported in other European countries.

Read moreFresh wave of fridge cyberattacks hits European supermarkets

On November 2, grocery stores across at least nine other European countries were hit by a suspected cyberattack on their freezer systems.

The incidents have shaken Europe at a time when officials have warned of the risk of cyberattacks from Russia as European countries press support of Ukraine in its war against Moscow.

In recent days, European air traffic has also been disrupted by false bomb alerts against dozens of flights, although the origin of those threats has yet to be made clear.

The United States and Israel fought a war against Iran that began with the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei on February 28.

European countries did not get involved in that conflict, but French officials have accused Iran of spreading misinformation related to the protests that have rocked France over the past month.

EU says fridge attacks 'deliberate attempt to disrupt' bloc's food supply

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'IRGC cyber unit responsible'

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement that a judicial investigation had been opened against the head of Shahid Kaveh and his two deputies.

She described the entity as "an offensive cyber unit affiliated with the Electronic and Cyber Centre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-CEC)".

Little is known about the Shahid Kaveh unit, although analysts have long observed that the IRGC, which has a vast network of operations, had actively branched out into cyber warfare in recent years.

Beccuau did not name the three individuals targeted in the probe.

"A hallmark of this unit's modus operandi is the use of the Persian language and IP addresses that trace back to terminals located in Iran," said the Paris prosecutor.

She said attackers had taken control of the equipment remotely via web interfaces "to initiate abnormal, indefinite defrost cycles".

Meanwhile, security alerts from sensors designed to go off when temperatures exceeded a certain threshold were "simultaneously disabled", she added.

Barrot said France had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Paris "to lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act".

"We will take any other necessary and proportionate measures – whether public or otherwise – to respond to this incident and deter anyone who might seek to repeat it," he added.

Speaking after Barrot, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said "our response should be strong", adding she had just learned of the attribution of the attack to Iran.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)