The Big Melt: France pins supermarket fridge cyber attacks on Iran

"I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Paris.

"This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression.”

Barrot added that it was the “first large-scale cyber attack” to occur on its national territory and called it a major attack on the “security of the French people”.

"We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible," he said.

The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said separately that an investigation has been opened into Shahid Kaveh, a unit of the IRGC known to employ young software engineers and developers and described by Beccuau as "an offensive cyber unit”.

"A hallmark of this unit's modus operandi is the use of the Persian language and IP addresses that trace back to terminals located in Iran," she said.

VIEW ALL

The attacks hit more than 600 supermarkets and grocers across the country in October, while a second attack targeted supermarkets in nine EU nations in early November.

A third wave of attacks also impacted fridges used by French blood banks, though the culprit behind those attacks has not yet been named.

Gary Barlet, Public Sector CTO at cyber security firm Illumio, told Cyber Daily he wasn't surprised by Iran taking the blame.

“Iran-linked groups have a track record of going after exposed, internet-connected equipment. But I'm impressed that France is planning to pursue sanctions at a European level,” Barlet said.

“It's not yet clear what form those sanctions will take, so that will be interesting to see. But this needs to happen more often. Too often an attack gets publicly called out, there's outrage, and then nothing happens. It sends a message to attackers that the cost of doing this is close to zero."