“We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, accusing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of carrying out cyberattacks on supermarket refrigerators across France.

A woman walks past empty fresh-food refrigerators at an Intermarché supermarket in Névez, western France, on Oct 12, 2026, following a cyberattack. (Photo: AFP/Fred Tanneau)

A woman walks past empty fresh-food refrigerators at an Intermarché supermarket in Névez, western France, on Oct 12, 2026, following a cyberattack. (Photo: AFP/Fred Tanneau)

PARIS: France on Monday (Nov 9) said Iran's Revolutionary Guards were behind cyberattacks on supermarket fridges in the country last month, vowing sanctions on a European level against Tehran over the first such large-scale cyber sabotage on French territory.

Numerous French supermarkets were hit in the Oct 11 and 12 cyberattacks, which raised the temperatures in their refrigerators, in some cases forcing them to throw away entire inventories of perishable food.

"I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said of the cyberattacks.

"This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression," he said on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Paris.

The Paris prosecutor said in a separate statement she had opened an investigation into Shahid Kaveh, a shadowy cyber unit of the IRGC, the Islamic republic's ideological army, over the attacks.

The cyber monitoring centre of four French security agencies said the unit is better known in the cyber world as CyberAveng3rs, its avatar through which it has claimed attacks in the past.

"It marks the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on our national territory, and it constitutes a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people," said Barrot.

"We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible," he added. 

OTHER COUNTRIES HIT

Barrot directly referred only to attacks against French supermarket systems, which he said targeted 700 sites.

However, similar incidents have been reported in other European countries.

On Nov 2, grocery stores across at least nine other European countries were hit by a suspected cyberattack on their freezer systems.

The incidents have shaken Europe at a time when officials have warned of the risk of cyberattacks from Russia while European countries press for support of Ukraine in its war against Moscow.

In recent days, European air traffic has also been disrupted by false bomb alerts against dozens of flights, although the origin of those threats has yet to be made clear.

The United States and Israel fought a war against Iran that began with the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Feb 28.

European countries did not get involved in that conflict, but French officials have accused Iran of spreading misinformation related to the protests that have rocked France over the past month. 

"It does not surprise us," responded US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who is attending the talks in Paris. "They (Iran) have done things like this for a very long time."

He described the IRGC as a "deranged group of revolutionaries" and asked "what kind of sickos are these people?"