France has openly pointed the finger at Iran for recent cyberattacks that crippled fridges and created havoc in hundreds of supermarkets across the nation.
“The responsibility for this attack lies with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday in Paris, in a rare direct attribution of the hacks to a foreign power.
Barrot, who was speaking on the sidelines of an informal G7 ministerial meeting, said he would be seeking retaliatory measures against Iran and has summoned the country’s ambassador about the matter.
“This is the first large-scale cyberattack with an aim of sabotage on the national territory,” Barrot said. “It hurts the nation’s interests and the security of French citizens. We will take sanctions at the European level against all who are responsible” and “we will take any other proportionate and necessary measure to respond to this attack and dissuade those who would like to reproduce it.”
Representatives for Iran’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Related: European Supermarkets Rush to Patch Vulnerabilities After Region-Wide Fridge Hack
In parallel, Paris prosecutors said in a statement Monday they have asked an investigative judge with wider probing powers to pursue the case they’d already begun last month. They are also seeking arrest warrants against the head of an Iranian cyber unit affiliated with Iran’s IRGC and his two deputies.
Investigators identified methods for the attack that were characteristic of this offensive cyber unit, according to the prosecutors, who cited the use of Farsi and IP addresses linked to devices located in Iran.
The hacks in France, affecting some 700 supermarkets, were executed through centralized fridge controllers, connected to the internet, which allow contractors to remotely monitor temperatures. Attackers gained access to some of those systems and manipulated their settings, triggering prolonged defrost cycles that caused refrigerators and freezers to heat up.
Photo: Photographer: Wiktor Dabkowski/Bloomberg
Topics France
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