• Analysis
Iranian hackers behind supermarket freezer hack, France says in first state attribution
France has attributed the supermarket freezer hack to hackers operating under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the first official attribution of this type of attack to the Iranian state. The intrusion raised fridge temperatures until some units caught fire.
A first attribution to Iran
The French government has attributed the supermarket freezer hack to hackers operating under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the announcement is the first to implicate the Iranian state in this type of attack. Freezer attacks elsewhere had not previously been officially attributed to Iran. The foreign minister described the attack as an act of "unprecedented scale and unprecedented aggression" and promised "Europe-wide sanctions".
A pattern of freezer attacks
The French attribution now sits alongside two earlier incidents abroad that were not officially tied to Iran.
- •Industrial freezers at an Israeli food production plant were hit in an attack in May.
- •In August, a wave of freezer malfunctions spoiled food at US military bases, and the episode is reportedly being treated as a suspected hack.
How unsophisticated the method was
According to Rafe Pilling, a senior director at Sophos, the hackers reached the fridge controls using default passwords - a method he described as unsophisticated. He said the French attacks are now presumed to be linked to a wave of rogue defrosting hacks across Europe last week.
The attacks themselves were not particularly complex.
Iran's place among cyber adversaries
Iran has a record of similar operations. In 2023, a state-backed Iranian group interrupted TV streaming services in the United Arab Emirates to broadcast a deepfake report on the war in Gaza. The same year, hackers affiliated with Iran displayed the slogan "down with Israel" on the screens of water-control equipment made by an Israeli firm. Pilling described the motive behind such operations:
In general Iran uses cyber-attacks to project power internationally and to signal their political displeasure with regional and international adversaries
Within the wider landscape of hostile state cyber actors, four stand out for the west, each with a distinct focus:
- •China: industrial espionage and mass data gathering.
- •Russia: disrupting enemy infrastructure.
- •Iran: operations such as those above, used for signalling.
- •North Korea: crypto theft.
The UK's national cybersecurity centre has warned the country is in the "foothills" of a new level of cyber threat and should expect a "huge rise" in incidents. Its main concern is AI, a technology now capable of highlighting previously unforeseen flaws in IT systems and helping attackers plan and carry out attacks.
The foreign minister has promised Europe-wide sanctions, while the freezer attacks in Israel and the US remain unattributed and the UK centre expects a "huge rise" in incidents as AI-assisted attacks emerge.
