France has accused personnel linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of carrying out a cyberattack on refrigeration systems at French food businesses in October. The allegation remains contested: The New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, reported that US intelligence agencies had low confidence in the French findings while the investigation was still at an early stage.

On November 9, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France had summoned Iran’s ambassador and would propose new sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities to European partners. According to a French Foreign Ministry statement cited by Xinhua, French investigators attributed the attack to personnel affiliated with the IRGC’s Electronic and Cyber Center.

French authorities said the attack occurred overnight on October 11–12 and affected refrigeration controls at about 700 large retail outlets, as well as smaller butcher shops, slaughterhouses and food-processing plants. They said attackers remotely raised equipment temperatures, forcing fresh and frozen products off shelves. Nationwide losses could reach millions of euros, according to the investigation.

Paris chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau said prosecutors had opened a judicial investigation and sought international arrest warrants for the head of a unit called Shahid Kaveh and two deputies. Their names were not released. Beccuau described the unit as an offensive cyber group within the IRGC’s Electronic and Cyber Center. French investigators said the attackers used Persian and IP addresses traceable to Iranian terminals, initiated prolonged defrost cycles and disabled temperature-change alarms. They also reported links between the attackers’ tools and infrastructure and earlier activity attributed to the unit.

The article distinguishes the October attack from a separate wave of refrigeration incidents in early November that affected more than 100 organizations across at least 11 European countries. No evidence had established a link between that later wave and an Iranian cyber unit, it reported. Three regional blood banks in France were among those affected; staff moved some blood to other cold storage. France’s blood agency said an alert prevented the loss of blood products after parameters at some of its cold-storage facilities were altered.

Cybersecurity specialists cited in the report said network-connected refrigeration controls can be vulnerable to remote access and that limited investment in security may compound the risk.

Source: m.thepaper.cn (originally published 2026-11-10 16:19 UTC+8)