France has attributed an October cyberattack on industrial refrigeration controllers at about 700 retail sites to Iran’s Shahid Kaveh cyber unit, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ electronic and cyber centre. The attack changed defrost settings to high temperatures, causing major food losses and at least 15 fires, according to a joint report published on November 9 by France’s Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre and CERT-FR. The French Foreign Ministry’s attribution statement put the losses at several tens of millions of euros.
The attack took place overnight on October 11–12. The report says most affected sites belonged to major retail groups, including Casino, Leclerc, Coopérative U, Metro, Carrefour and Intermarché. Smaller victims included butcher shops, a slaughterhouse and food-processing plants. Investigators also linked the operation to targeting of Schneider Electric equipment at small hydroelectric installations, although those incidents caused only moderate effects.
French investigators tied the operation to Shahid Kaveh through infrastructure also used to scan Schneider Electric systems, use of the FOFA search tool, traces of Farsi in the attack infrastructure, and the unit’s CyberbanNews channel relaying the operation on October 13. The report says these indicators support attribution to the IRGC as the sponsor and Shahid Kaveh as the executing unit.
France summoned Iran’s ambassador on November 10 after announcing the attribution. The Foreign Ministry said it would propose new European Union sanctions against individuals and entities involved, while reserving the right to take further public or non-public measures it considers necessary and proportionate.
The French government has not publicly linked the supermarket campaign to a separate November 1–2 attack on refrigeration systems at three French blood-service facilities. In that incident, monitoring systems detected the changes before any blood products were lost, as detailed in Abijita’s report on the French blood-bank freezer attack.
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