France supermarket hack marks new phase in Iran's shadow war

France supermarket hack marks new phase in Iran's shadow war

The cyberattack on supermarket refrigerators that France has blamed on Iran marks a new phase in the asymmetric campaign Tehran is waging against the United States, extending it onto European soil, analysts say.

France supermarket hack marks new phase in Iran's shadow war

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

France said Iran's Revolutionary Guards were behind the "unprecedented" cyberattacks, a charge Iran rejected.

While Paris referred only to attacks against French supermarkets, similar incidents were reported in at least 11 other European countries.

Iran has ramped up operations on European soil since the outbreak of the war launched by Israel and the United States in February, security sources and experts said.

Iran has also warned that any renewed strikes would trigger retaliation.

In recent days, "Iran has sent very clear signals to a number of countries, warning that if there is another major US-Israeli bombing campaign, there will be consequences in Europe", a European security source told AFP.

Tehran has already been accused of plotting various attacks on US interests in Europe, including against two air bases used by the United States in Britain the US military on Monday withdrew aircraft from Mildenhall Royal Air Force base.

It has also been accused of recruiting proxies to carry out attacks, including on a Bank of America branch in Paris this spring, and on Jewish targets, with synagogues attacked in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Paris has also accused Iran of spreading misinformation related to the protests that have rocked France and of mistreating the French embassy's number two diplomat in Tehran in October.

- Intimidation -

The war has been at a stalemate for months, with efforts under way to avert a resumption of hostilities.

Threats that Europe could be targeted have been echoed in propaganda circulated by outlets close to Tehran.

In a recent AI-generated propaganda video entitled "Europe On Fire", circulated by networks close to Iran, several European bases, including RAF Fairford in Britain and Istres air base in France, are shown under attack.

Missile warnings blare in Paris and London as civilians run through the streets. An English-language voiceover says: "You are not our enemies, but anyone anywhere in Europe who helps America harm our women and children, they're our enemies".

Intelligence monitoring group SITE reported that on November 8 the Persian-language outlet Teyban published a video targeting what it called "Satan's Nests" a reference to US military bases, including some in Europe such as Ramstein in Germany and Bezmer in Bulgaria.

From terrorist threats to cyberattacks, "it is a continuation of Iran's asymmetric threat strategy and its determination to bring the battlefield onto European soil", Clement Therme, Iran specialist at the University of Montpellier Paul-Valery, told AFP.

"It is similar to the way Russia conducts operations in Europe to strike at Ukraine's strategic depth. What is the strategic depth of the US military in its confrontation with Iran? What lies between Iran and the United States? Europe," he said.

- 'Horizontal escalation' -

Whereas American or Jewish interests were once the primary focus, the scope of potential targets has expanded, said Therme.

"We are now seeing a horizontal escalation, a geographical widening of the conflict and a shift in the nature of the targets towards civilian infrastructure such as refrigeration systems," he added.

One advantage of cyber operations is that they allow for plausible deniability.

Iran is among the leading actors in this field.

"Iran has highly developed offensive cyber capabilities" and is "more specialised in sabotage than in data theft", Anthony Chaix, a cybersecurity analyst at SQUAD, told AFP.

Unlike some other state actors that may hire cybercriminals to carry out operations, "Iran is generally known for conducting such operations itself".

Most of the time, "sabotage operations are carried out very quickly, the aim is not to stick around under the radar", Chaix said, although "they clearly also have the capability to conduct more discreet and longer-term operations".

SQUAD cybersecurity expert Kris Vanhulst said the hack targeting supermarket refrigeration systems differed from previous cyberattacks.

He pointed to "the nature of the target and the message it sends: 'we can reach anyone in the physical world'."

"This was not a single company," he added. "There were hundreds of impacts, it was extremely wide-ranging. The goal was to destabilise."

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