France blames Iran for cyber-attack on supermarket freezers

France has blamed hackers operating under Iran for a cyber-attack on supermarket freezers in France. According to the French authorities, the attack was carried out by hackers working under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key branch of Iran's military establishment.

There was no message this time, but the disruption made headlines around the world. Some refrigerators had their temperature turned up so high they caught fire. In the hours after the hack, supermarket employees dumped piles of perished meat and melted ice cream into rubbish containers.

France's foreign minister described the incident as an act of 'unprecedented scale and unprecedented aggression' and promised that 'Europe-wide sanctions' would be imposed against those responsible.

The attack follows an attack on industrial freezers at an Israeli food production plant in May and a wave of freezer malfunctions that spoiled food at US military bases in August, which are now reportedly being treated as a suspected hack. Those attacks have not been officially attributed to Iran, but the French announcement is the first to implicate the state in this type of hack.

Iranian hackers like to send a message. In 2023, a state-backed group interrupted TV streaming services in the United Arab Emirates to broadcast a deepfake report on the war in Gaza. In the same year, hackers affiliated with Iran displayed the slogan 'down with Israel' on the screens of water-control equipment made by an Israeli firm.

Rafe Pilling, a senior director at Sophos, a cybersecurity firm, said the attack was 'not particularly complex'. The hackers used default passwords to access the fridge controls. In his view, this was in line with Iranian capabilities.

Pilling said there was now a presumption that the French attacks and a wave of rogue defrosting hacks across Europe last week were linked.

Hostile cyber operations against the West tend to come from a quartet of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. All have different aims and characteristics: China has focused on industrial espionage and mass data gathering, Russia on disrupting enemy infrastructure and spreading disinformation, and North Korea on hacking crypto exchanges because it needs money. According to Pilling, Iran wants to put a shot across the bow of its enemies.

In general, Iran uses cyber-attacks to project power internationally and to signal its political displeasure with regional and international adversaries, he said.

The fridge hacks came as the UK's national cybersecurity centre warned the country is in the 'foothills' of a new level of cyber threat and should expect a 'huge rise' in the volume of incidents. The main concern is AI, a technology now capable of highlighting previously unforeseen flaws in IT systems and helping attackers plan and carry out attacks.

However, the underlying context of the fridge attacks is not AI but geopolitics. The refrigeration system vulnerabilities were relatively easy to find and exploit. But a combination of groundbreaking technology and tense global relations makes for an alarming landscape.