France Blames Iran for Supermarket Cyber Sabotage as Evidence Remains Unpublished

France Blames Iran for Supermarket Cyber Sabotage as Evidence Remains Unpublished
France has accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of orchestrating cyberattacks that altered supermarket refrigeration controls, spoiled food and caused losses estimated in the millions or tens of millions of euros. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the operation “unprecedented, both in its scale and in its level of aggressiveness,” and said France would seek European sanctions against those responsible.

French prosecutors have taken a more specific legal approach, opening an investigation into the Shahid Kaveh group, described as an offensive cyber unit linked to the Revolutionary Guard. Paris prosecutors have sought international arrest warrants for the group’s alleged leader and two aides, while authorities say digital tools associated with the group, Persian-language records and internet addresses linked to devices in Iran point toward the suspects.

The reported scale differs slightly between accounts but points to widespread disruption. One report said more than 100 Coopérative U outlets and 180 Intermarché and Netto stores were affected in the initial October incident; refrigerators in some locations reportedly reached 50°C overnight. Another put the total at about 700 commercial premises and said the incidents included at least 15 small fires, according to France’s cybersecurity agency, ANSSI.

France’s government frames the episode as the country’s first large-scale cyber sabotage attack on its territory and has summoned Iran’s ambassador in protest. Yet the accusation remains contested in an evidentiary sense: Tehran had not publicly responded, France had not released the material underlying its attribution, and officials had not formally tied a later wave of refrigeration incidents across several European countries to the same Iranian group.

That distinction is significant because two Russia-aligned digital activist groups claimed responsibility for some attacks, a claim experts reportedly found unconvincing. The competing claims leave France pressing ahead with sanctions and criminal action while the public case for who carried out every incident remains incomplete.

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