France on Monday said Iran hacked into hundreds of grocery store refrigeration systems across the country, marking a severe disruption to the food chain.
French officials vowed retaliatory sanctions and launched an investigation after accusing Iranian hackers of changing temperature settings remotely on refrigerators across 700 sites. The development marks the “first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory,” officials said, and mirrors incidents reported by around seven other European countries, including Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
“I can confirm that responsibility for this attack lies with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters at a meeting of the Group of Seven nations in Paris.
“We will impose sanctions at the European level against all those responsible, and we will take all other proportionate and necessary measures, public or not, to respond,” he continued.
Officials said the cyberattack triggered roughly 20 fires, and “significant food spoilage,” including the destruction of tons of frozen and chilled food. Barrot framed the hacking as “a major assault on the nation’s interests and the security of the French people.” Paris summoned the Iranian ambassador to France to “lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act,” he said.
U.S. intelligence agencies reached a “low confidence” assessment that Iran was responsible for the attacks in France, three officials told the New York Times.
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French prosecutors said they issued international arrest warrants for three Iranians “affiliated with the Electronic and Cyber Center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
“The attackers gained remote control of the equipment via web interfaces, starting indefinite, abnormal defrost cycles while simultaneously disabling safety alerts designed to set off when temperatures exceeded specific thresholds,” said Paris’s chief prosecutor, Laure Beccuau.