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France on Monday accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of carrying out "unprecedented" cyberattacks that disrupted refrigeration systems at 700 supermarket sites last month, announcing plans to pursue European Union sanctions against those responsible.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the attacks, which took place Oct. 11-12, remotely raised temperatures in supermarket refrigerators, forcing some retailers to discard entire inventories of perishable food.
"I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Barrot said on the sidelines of a Group of Seven foreign ministers' meeting in Paris.
"This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression," he added.
The accusations came as French prosecutors announced an investigation targeting the leadership of an alleged IRGC cyber unit, while Paris summoned Iran's ambassador to protest the incidents.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said a judicial investigation had been opened against the head of Shahid Kaveh, a cyber unit linked to the IRGC, and two of his deputies.
She described the group as "an offensive cyber unit affiliated with the Electronic and Cyber Centre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-CEC)".
The prosecutor did not identify the three individuals under investigation.
According to Beccuau, the attackers remotely accessed refrigeration equipment through web interfaces and manipulated their operating systems.
The hackers took control of the equipment "to initiate abnormal, indefinite defrost cycles", she said.
Security alerts designed to warn operators when temperatures exceeded certain thresholds were "simultaneously disabled", she added.
Beccuau said investigators had identified technical characteristics that they associated with the Iranian 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.
Barrot described the incidents as a serious threat to French national security.
"It 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.
Barrot said France had summoned Iran's ambassador in Paris to formally protest the attacks.
The minister also announced plans to seek European sanctions against those identified as responsible.
"We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible," he said.
"We will take any other necessary and proportionate measures -- whether public or otherwise -- to respond to this incident and deter anyone who might seek to repeat it," he added.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, speaking after Barrot, said "our response should be strong".
Kallas said she had only just learned of France's attribution of the attacks to Iran.
The French accusations come amid reports of similar cyberattacks targeting supermarket refrigeration systems in other European countries.
On Nov. 2, grocery stores in at least nine other European countries experienced suspected cyberattacks affecting freezer equipment.
However, Barrot's accusations specifically concerned the October attacks in France, and French authorities did not publicly attribute the incidents in other countries to the IRGC.
The incidents have heightened concerns over cybersecurity and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure across Europe.
European officials have also warned of cyber threats linked to Russia amid the continuing war in Ukraine, while dozens of flights across the continent have faced false bomb alerts in recent days.
Authorities have not established a connection between those aviation incidents and the supermarket attacks.
The French government's accusations against Iran come amid broader tensions following the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran, which began Feb. 28.
European countries did not participate in the conflict, although French officials have separately accused Iran of spreading misinformation related to recent protests in France.
The judicial investigation into the supermarket cyberattacks remains ongoing, while the European sanctions announced by Barrot have yet to be implemented.
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