France Summons Iran’s Ambassador After Blaming Revolutionary Guard for Supermarket Fridge Hack

France summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday after accusing Tehran of a cyberattack that disabled refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets across the country, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said, warning that Paris could answer with cyber measures of its own.

French officials said on Monday that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the attacks, which hit commercial refrigeration systems in early October. Hackers remotely connected to the controllers for fridges and freezers at about 700 retail sites overnight on Oct. 11-12 and raised temperatures by switching on defrost cycles, spoiling large amounts of fresh and frozen food. France’s cyber agency said the attack started fires in at least 15 cases.

How France tied the attack to the Guard

France’s cyber agency, ANSSI, tied the attack to Shahid Kaveh, an offensive cyber unit it places inside the Guard’s Electronic and Cyber Center. It cited four points: the shape of the attack infrastructure, tools linked to the unit, a propaganda outlet tied to Shahid Kaveh that relayed the attack, and traces of Persian in the attack infrastructure.

Paris prosecutors have opened a judicial investigation and requested international arrest warrants for the leader of Shahid Kaveh and its two deputies, Tech Times reported, citing Al Jazeera.

Barrot called the attack “an attack of unprecedented scale and unprecedented aggressiveness” and “the first large-scale cyberattack carried out for sabotage purposes on French national territory.” He said France will push for sanctions at a European level and added: “We will take whatever measures are necessary, including some that we will not discuss publicly, if we judge them proportionate and necessary to deter any new attacks and punish those responsible for this unacceptable aggression.”

Iran has not answered the charge

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not return messages seeking comment on Monday, Reuters reported. Iran routinely denies carrying out malicious cyber operations. The French attribution is a government claim, not a court finding.

The supermarket hacks were among the most disruptive cyberattacks since the war between the United States and Iran began in February, a conflict marked by sporadic episodes of suspected digital sabotage.

France did not blame Iran for a separate wave of suspected freezer attacks reported in other European countries on Nov. 2. Pro-Russian groups claimed that wave, but their claims could not be independently verified, Tech Times reported.

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters, CNN and Tech Times.