World
France has accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of being behind “unprecedented” cyber-attacks on supermarket fridges in the country last month, vowing European sanctions against Tehran.
“I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said on Monday, November 9, of the hacks that took place on October 11 and 12.
“This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression,” he said, adding, “We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible for this attack.”
The hacks that struck hundreds of French supermarkets in early October were among the most disruptive cyberattacks of the Iran war that began in February.
These have included hacks against the Los Angeles transit system in March, against US water treatment plants in July and against ships bound for the United States in August.
The October hacks were followed this month, November, by a second wave of hacking that hit more than 100 establishments across Europe and even affected refrigerators used by French blood banks, prompting employees there to have to move some of the blood to different cold storage units.
Iran routinely denies carrying out malicious cyber operations.
The October 11 cyberattack, which overrode the temperature controls on commercial fridges in hundreds of establishments, appeared to have been easy to pull off, cybersecurity experts previously told Reuters. The firm behind many of the stricken units said that several were obsolete or were running outdated firmware, which could have made it easy for hackers to break in.
The effects of the hacks were dramatic. Some refrigerators had the temperature turned up so high they caught fire. In the hours following the hack, supermarket employees carted boxes full of perished meat and melted ice cream into giant trash containers.
The attack’s total costs could add up to tens of millions of euros nationwide, one French supermarket owner estimated.
See video below.
Happening across Europe. Hackers are hitting supermarket refrigeration systems: 50°C in the freezers, everything trashed. Empty shelves in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Finland and Estonia. France was hit first. This is a hybrid attack on the food supply chain.
— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) November 3, 2026
🇸🇪 Supermarket freezers in Sweden suddenly heated up over the weekend, and one store says they hit 50°C The store thinks it was hacked, and Sweden isn’t alone: around 40 stores in Belgium had the same problem at about the same time, and roughly 700 stores in France were hit back in October. Now even the groceries aren’t safe from hackers. Writer: Daniyal https://t.co/W5ovKGw5mh
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 2, 2026
