France has formally blamed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards for last month’s cyberattacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, summoned Iran’s ambassador in Paris, and set prosecutors to seek international arrest warrants for three men it identifies as the leaders of the unit behind the operation.
The attacks, which we reported on October 12, struck on October 11 and 12. Hackers took control of the temperature systems of fridges and freezers at roughly 700 sites, most of them supermarkets, and turned temperatures up for hours while the stores were closed. Fresh and frozen food spoiled across the country. The Wall Street Journal put the damage in the tens of millions of dollars.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced the attribution on Monday at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Paris. He called it “an attack of unprecedented scale and unprecedented aggressiveness” and the first large scale cyberattack carried out for sabotage on French territory. “It represents a major assault on the nation’s interests and on the security of the French people,” he said.
French authorities attribute the operation to Shahid Kaveh, an offensive cyber unit under the Revolutionary Guards’ electronic and cyber warfare command. The Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, has opened a judicial investigation and is seeking international arrest warrants for the unit’s leader and two deputies, named in French reporting as Hamid Reza Lashgarian, Mahdi Lashgarian and Reza Salarvand. The evidence prosecutors have cited publicly is the use of the Farsi language in the operation and internet addresses pointing to devices located in Iran. A request for warrants is not the same as warrants issued, and none of the three men is in custody.
France says the Iranian ambassador was summoned to receive a strong protest, and that it will propose new European Union sanctions against the people and entities it holds responsible. The EU sanctioned a different Iranian firm in March over related cyber activity.
Iran has not commented on the accusation, and its mission to the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment from reporters. The attribution is France’s finding from its own investigation. It has not been independently established in public, and it lands in the middle of the wider war between Iran and the United States and Israel, in which French officials say this attack was one of the most disruptive operations on European soil.
Transparency note: This story is based on reporting by Reuters, CNN and the Wall Street Journal of the French government’s statements and the Paris prosecutor’s announcement. Iran’s position is recorded as no comment because Tehran has not given one.
