France suspects Iranian hackers of refrigerator attack — Jerusalem Post
French officials suspect that hackers backed by the Iranian state were behind a cyberattack on commercial refrigerators and freezers at hundreds of establishments in France. The Jerusalem Post reports, citing two informed sources.
Temperature rose to 50 degrees
The attack on October 11 changed temperature settings in connected refrigeration equipment. In hundreds of French supermarkets, the temperature in refrigerators and freezers rose to 50 degrees Celsius overnight. This caused food spoilage and fires.
The Paris prosecutor's office described the incident as a large-scale attack affecting connected refrigerators at several major French food retailers. According to its information, the consequences included food losses and fires. An employee of the office of French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that the head of government had instructed France's National Agency for the Security of Information Systems, ANSSI, to investigate the incident.
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Similar cases in other countries
A company associated with many of the affected devices said that several of them were outdated or running outdated firmware. Cybersecurity experts had previously noted that this could have made the systems easier to hack.
On November 2, a similar incident affected the Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt chains in Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as the Swedish grocery chains ICA and Coop. At least one IKEA store was also affected. ICA store manager Engla Ingwall in Stockholm told Reuters that the attack began at around 2 a.m., and its consequences were discovered only several hours later: the temperature in all freezers had risen to 50 degrees. ICA confirmed that the incident affected a limited number of stores.
France's Foreign Ministry and the Paris prosecutor's office did not provide immediate comment. Iran's mission to the UN also did not respond to requests for comment. Iran regularly denies involvement in malicious cyber operations.
