France has formally blamed Iranian military hackers for a mid-October campaign that, it says, took over refrigeration controllers at about 700 retail sites, from supermarkets to butcher shops, turning up the temperature overnight and spoiling food worth an estimated millions of euros, NPR reported. Iran rejected the charge.
The French National Cybersecurity Agency, ANSSI, released a detailed statement Monday. Iran's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it rejected "baseless and malicious allegations" and condemned a "hackneyed policy of leveling accusations against Iran." ANSSI also alleged that several small hydroelectric plants were targeted, with "moderate effects," and that employees at a major French blood bank had to act quickly to save samples when their refrigeration system was hit. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the campaign "unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression" and "the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory." The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into an Iranian cyber unit known as Shahid Kaveh, which the French government links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and said it is "requesting the issuance of international arrest warrants." These are allegations; they have not been proven in court, and Iran denies them.
A wider wave of refrigeration hacks
The French case is part of a broader pattern in 2026, NPR reported. Grocery stores in European countries including Sweden and Ireland were hit in similar attacks last week. In Israel in the spring, a group calling itself "Cyber Isnaad Front" claimed it sabotaged an industrial food plant, infected corporate computers, used office printers to print threats and hacked cameras for a propaganda video released in early October; that video included a taunt in French and came just before the supermarket attacks. Cyber firm Profero attributed the Israel incident to a wing of the Revolutionary Guard. Over the summer, commissaries on U.S. military bases also saw food spoil after refrigerator and freezer temperatures rose overnight. France is the first government to formally assign blame for the wave, NPR reported, saying it identified the hackers through digital clues. The report did not describe those clues in the portion of the ANSSI statement reviewed here, and they should not be inferred.