France accuses Iran of being behind cyberattacks that affected grocery store fridges and freezers

World

By Linda Ikeji
9 November 2026, 7:11 pm

France has accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of being behind “unprecedented” cyber-attacks on grocery store fridges within the nation final month, vowing European sanctions in opposition to Tehran.

“I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the French overseas minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, mentioned on Monday, November 9, of the hacks that passed off on October 11 and 12.

“This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression,” he mentioned, including, “We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible for this attack.”

The hacks that ‌struck lots of of French supermarkets in early October had been among the many most disruptive cyberattacks of the Iran battle that started in February.

These have included hacks in opposition to the Los Angeles transit system in March, in opposition to US water remedy crops in July and in opposition to ships sure for the United States in ​August.

The October hacks had been adopted this month, November, by a second wave of hacking that hit greater than 100 institutions ‌throughout Europe ⁠and even affected fridges utilized by French blood banks, prompting workers there to have to maneuver among the blood to totally different chilly storage models.

Iran routinely denies finishing up malicious cyber operations.

The October 11 cyberattack, ​which overrode the temperature controls on industrial fridges in lots of of institutions, appeared to have been straightforward to drag off, cybersecurity specialists beforehand instructed Reuters. The agency ​behind lots of the stricken models mentioned that a number of had been out of date or had been working outdated firmware, which may have made it straightforward for hackers to interrupt in.

The results of the hacks had been dramatic. Some fridges had the temperature turned up so excessive they caught hearth. In the hours following the hack, grocery store workers carted bins filled with perished meat and ​melted ice cream into big trash containers.

The assault’s whole prices may add as much as tens of hundreds of thousands of euros nationwide, one French grocery store proprietor estimated.

See video under.

Happening throughout Europe. Hackers are hitting grocery store refrigeration methods: 50°C within the freezers, the whole lot trashed. Empty cabinets in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Finland and Estonia. France was hit first. This is a hybrid assault on the meals provide chain.

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) November 3, 2026

🇸🇪 Supermarket freezers in Sweden all of a sudden heated up over the weekend, and one retailer says they hit 50°C The retailer thinks it was hacked, and Sweden is not alone: round 40 shops in Belgium had the identical drawback at about the identical time, and roughly 700 shops in France had been hit again in October. Now even the groceries aren’t protected from hackers. Writer: Daniyal https://t.co/W5ovKGw5mh

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 2, 2026