French authorities on Monday accused hackers aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of carrying out the cyberattack that disabled refrigeration systems at 700 French grocery stores in early October.
The Paris prosecutor’s office is seeking international arrest warrants for the leader and two deputies of Shahid Kaveh — an IRGC-aligned organized cybercrime group.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced a formal judicial investigation on Monday, saying the attack had “been committed to serve the interests of a foreign power — in this case, Iran.”
The attack “marks the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Monday. “We will impose sanctions at the European level against all those responsible for this attack,” he added, vowing to take “any other measures needed” to respond to it and deter future attacks.
The French government’s cybersecurity authority traced multiple IP addresses involved in the cyberattack back to devices located in Iran and found that the hackers organized the operation in Farsi.
Barrot said he had summoned Iran’s ambassador to “strongly protest against this extremely gr...