sabotage

The French government said it is seeking tough sanctions to deter further cyberattacks across Europe.

France says it has summoned Iran’s ambassador to Paris “to lodge a very strong protest” after it accused Tehran of carrying out a major cyberattack targeting supermarket fridges last month.

“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,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Tuesday.

“I can also tell you that we rule nothing out and will take all measures – including those we may not disclose publicly – that we deem proportionate and necessary to deter any further attacks,” he added.

Barrot, speaking on France Info ‌‌television, said the government would push for European Union sanctions in response to what he called an “attack of unprecedented scale and aggression in our country”.

He said firm measures would be taken “to deter anyone who might be tempted, in Iran or elsewhere, to do it again”.

On Monday, Barrot said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was behind cyberattacks targeting more than 700 French supermarkets on October 11 and 12, when refrigerators were remotely accessed “to initiate abnormal, indefinite defrost cycles”.

Raised temperatures in fridges forced the supermarkets to throw away all perishable food.

Millions of euros’ worth of food was spoiled, according to retailers. In some cases, the raised temperatures sparked fires or melted equipment.

French supermarket groups E-Leclerc, Intermarche, Carrefour, Monoprix and Cooperative U were all hit.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Monday she had opened an investigation into Shahid Kaveh, a cyber unit of the IRGC, over the attacks.

The prosecutor’s office has requested international arrest warrants be issued for two Shahid Kaveh officials.

Similar incidents have since been reported in other European countries.

In a suspected cyberattack on November 2, temperature spikes were recorded in stores in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden.

Jody Westby, chief executive of Global Cyber Risk LLC, said tracking down the group directly responsible for the attacks is “very difficult” because of poor cooperation on international cybercrime investigations.

“It’s been a problem for 20 some years, and now it’s a little better, but only marginally so,” Westby told Al Jazeera. She said that it was difficult to track and trace the origin of such attacks “because of the nature of packet switching”.

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 determined.

Authorities say the fire in Brasov in September is part of a broader Russian campaign against European countries that support Ukraine.

Romanian authorities say they have uncovered a network “coordinated” by Russia that they believe was responsible for a fire at an industrial site near a state-owned weapons factory in September.

Romania’s Intelligence Service said on Monday that the blaze in the central city of Brasov on September 14 was “part of a wider campaign of sabotage operations coordinated” by Russia amid its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The agency said the operations were aimed at arms manufacturers and “other targets of military and industrial interest”.

“These actions are intended to intimidate, undermine defence capabilities and weaken the contribution of the targeted states to European and regional security,” it said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Russia on Romania’s claim. Moscow has previously repeatedly denied such accusations.

Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, known as DIICOT, said three people had been involved in the Brasov fire – two Belarusians and a Ukrainian, all living in European Union countries.

Two were “tracked down and remanded in custody in Germany while they were preparing to commit similar offenses”, the directorate said.

The third remains at large in Poland.

According to Romania’s Intelligence Service, recruits for such networks are often found on social media and are first offered money “for a seemingly harmless task”, such as “observing or photographing certain targets”.

Over time, “the tasks become increasingly serious, potentially involving acts of vandalism, arson or even murder”, it said.

‘Hybrid’ war

Romania, a member of the EU and NATO, shares a border of more than 600km with Ukraine.

Its centrist president, Nicusor Dan, has said the country is a target of a hybrid war that Russia is waging to destabilise nations backing Kyiv, citing drone incursions into Romanian airspace, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns and sabotage.

Foreign Minister Dan Neculaescu said the fire in Brasov was “part of a broader campaign of sabotage across Europe” targeting military production.

“Hybrid attacks will not hold us back from strengthening our resilience and defense,” he wrote on X.

The accusation follows a string of incidents at defence sites across Europe in recent weeks.

In September, explosions and a fire erupted at an ammunition storage site in Bulgaria, weeks after a blaze at another munitions facility in the country. Both sites are operated by the Bulgarian arms maker EMCO, whose munitions are used in Ukraine.

That same month, firebombs were thrown near the offices of a defence company in Munich, and Romanian authorities said they had detained a Russian citizen accused of filming and photographing military sites in preparation for sabotage.

In August, a blast struck an ammunition factory near Rome in Italy operated by the arms maker KNDS.

At sea, at least eight cargo ships have been hit off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria over the past three weeks, and about 34 sailors have been reported dead or missing.

Dan, the Romanian president, has called the attacks on ships in Romanian waters “a new example of the tragic consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine”.

A year ago, Poland and Romania also detained eight people suspected of taking part in a Russian plot to send exploding parcels to Ukraine.