France blames Iran for supermarket fridge cyberattacks

France has summoned Iran's ambassador and vowed consequences after officially naming the country's Islamic Revoluntionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as responsible for cyberattacks which crippled supermarket fridges across Europe.

The attacks saw the temperatures of fridges remotely turned up, forcing stock to be pulled from shelves and many supermarkets to close.

On Monday evening, local time, France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot became the first European leader to place blame for the fridge cyber attacks on the IRGC.

"I can confirm that this attack was carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Mr Barrot said of the cyber attacks on French supermarkets that occurred October 11 and 12.

"This attack is unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression.

" We will implement sanctions at the European level against all those responsible for this attack. "

French prosecutors also announced they would open a probe into an alleged Iranian cyber unit responsible for last month's attacks, which saw hundreds of supermarkets affected.

"A judicial investigation has been opened against the head of the Iranian group Shahid Kaveh, an offensive cyber unit affiliated with the Electronic and Cyber Center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-CEC), against his two deputies, and against any other individuals who may be identified," Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.

Neither Mr Barrot nor prosecutors said whether a second spate of fridge cyberattacks last week were connected.

Those more recent attacks came in the same week that dozens of European flights were subjected to bomb hoaxes. No country has so far been blamed.

Suspicion for both the fridge cyber-campaign and the bomb hoaxes had fallen on either Iran or Russia, with the latter also alleged to be waging a so-called "hybrid war" across Europe on allies of Ukraine.