Iran behind France grocery store refrigerator and freezer hacks, prosecutor says

November 9, 2026 / 12:15 PM EST / CBS News

French officials believe Iran was behind nationwide cyberattacks on commercial refrigeration units at hundreds of grocery stores in October, the Paris prosecutor's office said Monday, accusing a cyber unit of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of carrying out the costly hacks.

The Oct. 11 hacking attack struck major supermarket chains, hitting "700 retail locations across France," according to the prosecutor's office, which said the attack caused "significant food spoilage and triggered roughly twenty fires" as the temperatures in refrigeration units shot up.

The attacks on the French grocery store chains were followed weeks later by similar hacks affecting refrigerators and freezers at supermarkets in Belgium, Luxembourg and Sweden. A separate cyberattack targeted several blood banks in France, but the products and samples were not damaged.

In August, refrigeration outages at six U.S. military bases sparked an ongoing investigation by the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division, Thomas Hamilton, a public affairs officer for the department, told CBS News.

There has been no assertion yet by officials in France, the U.S. or the other European nations hit by the hacks that all of the incidents were connected.

In its…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/