Ella Kiplingand
Joe Tidy,Cyber Correspondent, BBC World Service
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France has accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of being behind cyber-attacks that raised the temperatures of supermarket fridges and freezers.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the attack was “unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression”, adding those who were responsible would be hit with sanctions “at the European level”.
Iran is yet to respond to Barrot’s allegations.
The cyber-attack last month saw fridges and freezers in hundreds of supermarkets across France heated up, which spoilt fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros.
Then last week, dozens of supermarkets across several other European countries were also impacted by a cyber-attack that targeted fridges and freezers. It is not known if the instances are linked.
Barrot said the attack on France’s supermarkets “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”.
He said the government had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Paris to “lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act”.
France will take “any other necessary and proportionate measures” to respond to the incident and “deter anyone who might seek to repeat it”, Barrot added.
Separately on Monday, the Paris prosecutor said an investigation had been opened into the head of an offensive cyber unit associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as his two deputies.
Laure Beccuau named the unit as Shahid Kaveh, which she said had an affiliation with the electronic and cyber centre of the IRGC.
Shahid Kaveh is the name given to a cluster of hackers thought to be directly employed but the Iranian regime.
More than 100 of Coopérative U’s supermarkets were hit, as well as 180 stores from Intermarché and its Netto brand. In some stores, temperatures of the fridges reportedly rose to 50C (120F) overnight.
Other major food retailers including Carrefour, Monoprix and E.Leclerc were also hit by the attack, which targeted software provided by Danish engineering firm Danfoss.
The software allows retailers to manage their cold units remotely.
Supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
And in August a small number of US military bases had fridges mysteriously malfunction spoiling food. The incidents are also being investigated as deliberate cyber attacks, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Since the waves of attacks on freezers, experts have been speculating which hacking groups could be responsible, with Iran being on a list of potential suspects.
The French government has not said how it reached the conclusion that Iran was responsible, and attribution of cyber attacks is extremely hard as hackers are able to hide their locations.
