Paris (France) (AFP) - The French Foreign Minister said on Tuesday that Paris does not rule out taking "any option" to respond to a large-scale cyberattack that targeted the refrigerators of hundreds of supermarkets in October, and which French authorities accuse Iran of being behind.
Published on: 10/11/2026 - 11:01
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that France, in addition to summoning the Iranian ambassador and seeking to impose sanctions at the European level, “does not rule out any option, and will take all measures that it deems proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks, including measures that we may not announce.”
Barrow explained to France Info TV that the goal is to "deter any party that might think about repeating this, whether in Iran or elsewhere."
Barrow announced on Monday that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was behind cyber attacks that targeted major stores, in the first cyber sabotage of this scale on French soil.
“This attack is unprecedented in terms of its size and level of aggression,” Barrow said on the sidelines of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Paris.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that its Secretary-General received the Iranian ambassador on Tuesday.
The cyber attacks that occurred on October 11 and 12 affected hundreds of French supermarkets, causing temperatures inside their refrigerators to rise, forcing many of them to get rid of their entire stocks of perishable food.
An electronic unit of the Revolutionary Guard
Similar incidents have since been recorded in other European countries.
On November 2, stores in at least nine other European countries were hit by a suspected cyberattack targeting their freezing systems.
On Monday, the Public Prosecutor in Paris, Laure Picot, announced the opening of an investigation into a mysterious electronic unit affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard known as “Shahid Kawa”, against the backdrop of the attacks.
The Prosecutor's Office requested the issuance of international arrest warrants against two officials in the unit.
Beko described this party as "an electronic attack unit affiliated with the Electronic and Cyber Warfare Center of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."
The French Center for Coordination of Cyber Crises, which includes security services, including intelligence, said that the unit “is carrying out large-scale campaigns targeting industrial equipment with the aim of sabotage, and are directed primarily against Israel and the United States, but also against France and other European countries.”
The United States and Israel fought a war against Iran that began with strikes on February 28, and on its first day led to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of senior officials.
European countries did not participate in the conflict, but French officials accused Iran of spreading misleading information related to the protests and riots that France witnessed over the past month.
In the cyber attacks that targeted 700 sites in France, the attackers took control of cooling systems through electronic interfaces available on the Internet, with the aim of “starting unnatural cycles of defrosting that continue indefinitely,” and disabling alerts issued by sensors designed to warn when temperatures exceed a certain limit, according to Picot.
© 2026 AFP
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