Hackers remotely spiked the temperatures of refrigerators and freezers at roughly 700 of France’s 10,000 supermarkets on October 12, spoiling millions of dollars in fresh and frozen goods.
Major grocery chains including Carrefour, Intermarché, and Monoprix faced widespread equipment sabotage during the mid-October cyberattacks. The Intermarché chain reported single-day losses reaching tens of millions of euros after thermostats were pushed as high as 50 degrees Celsius for six hours.
French authorities formally attributed the supermarket sabotage to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Monday. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stated that the cyberattack was an attack of unprecedented scale and aggression.
“I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Mr Barrot told reporters at G7 talks in Paris. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau added that investigators traced Farsi language patterns and IP addresses back to Iran.
The French government summoned the Iranian ambassador to lodge a formal protest against what officials termed a major assault on national security. Mr Barrot pledged that European-level sanctions would soon target everyone involved in the operation.
The national cybersecurity agency ANSSI linked the intrusion to an offensive cyber unit known as Shahid Kaveh. Paris prosecutors subsequently opened a judicial inquiry targeting the head of the group and two deputies on charges of organized cyber fraud and causing damage dangerous to persons.
Similar freezer tampering incidents hit grocery stores in Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Estonia throughout October and early November. Security researchers noted that some of the compromised refrigeration systems relied on web-based controllers from Danish manufacturer Danfoss.
Chains including Intermarché, Carrefour, and Monoprix sustained inventory losses after digital thermostats were overridden in mid-October.
France’s national cybersecurity agency ANSSI attributed the operation to the Shahid Kaveh group, which operates under Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Worth a look