French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrault said on Tuesday that France was “not ruling out anything” in its response to October’s mass cyberattack on supermarket refrigerators, which blamed Iran.
The French government summoned Iran’s ambassador on Tuesday morning after Paris announced Monday that an investigation found Shahid Kaveh, a member of the powerful Revolutionary Guard’s cyber unit, was responsible for the hack.
Barot told France Info radio station that the French government could respond by banning people from entering European territory and freezing the assets of those responsible to prevent further malicious acts against the region.
Investigation points to Iranian hackers
Approximately 700 grocery stores were hacked remotely between the night of October 11 and October 12, causing refrigerators and freezers to heat up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
Rising temperatures spoiled food and caused fires that caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Major French retailers such as Intermarché and E. Leclerc, carrefourMonopri and Cooperative U were targeted.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office is seeking an international arrest warrant, Paris Chief Prosecutor Laure Becuau said in a statement.
On October 12, 2026, a customer enters the Intermarche supermarket in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux after a refrigerator defrosts after the French supermarket chain Intermarche and Cooperative U suffered a cyber attack.
Dimitar Dirkov | AFP | Getty Images
Investigators found the use of Farsi language and an IP address pointing to a device in Iran, the statement said, adding that the attack was carried out in the service of a foreign power, in this case Iran.
The hack targeted refrigeration controllers provided by Danfoss and Dixel, with the attackers controlling the devices remotely through a web interface and initiating unlimited defrost cycles while disabling safety alerts on sensors designed to trigger when temperatures exceed set thresholds.
France proposes new sanctions against Iran
The French government also announced on Monday that it would propose new European sanctions against Iranian-linked entities and individuals and would summon Iran’s ambassador.
“France condemns in the strongest possible terms the unacceptable cyber-attack carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran on its territory against its interests,” the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“This is an unprecedented campaign in terms of its scale and level of aggressiveness, and is the first cyberattack campaign carried out purely for the purpose of sabotage of the homeland.”
“This attacker poses a continuing threat to our nation’s critical infrastructure. These devastating cyberattacks are unjustified, intolerable, and in violation of international law,” the ministry said.
CNBC has reached out to the Iranian government for comment.
France has blamed Iranian-based attackers for several previous cyberattacks against the country, including the 2023 attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and the 2024 Paris Olympics, as well as “information manipulation campaigns.” These led to sanctions in March 2026 on Iranian private company Emmennet Pasargad.
European infrastructure vulnerabilities
More supermarket fridges across Europe were targeted in November, with stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland and Sweden reporting losses.
French blood banks were also affected by a cybersecurity attack on November 2, according to the French Blood Agency.
In a statement translated from French to English by CNBC, EFS said temperature and thawing thresholds for cold storage used to store blood products and samples bound for medical facilities and biobanks were “set at excessively high levels.”
Meanwhile, European leaders and citizens were shaken by a series of fabricated bomb threats, causing dozens of passenger planes to make emergency landings.
“We feel this could be a very subtle message from a hostile actor warning European governments that they have the ability to interfere with critical infrastructure and disrupt critical services at any time if necessary,” Simon Edwards, CEO of cybersecurity testing organization SE Labs, said in an emailed comment.
“Whether this is an attempt to blackmail the government or a preparation for something bigger, it shows how vulnerable our infrastructure is.”
“A lack of basic cybersecurity hygiene is a major enabler of these attacks. Why were these refrigerators connected to the internet and accessible without a password in the first place?”
— CNBC’s Emma Graham and Soda Baimya contributed to this article.
