Belgium sees no indication Iran was behind supermarket cooling attacks

Belgium has no indication that Iran or any other party was behind recent cyberattacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, foreign minister Maxime Prévot has said, according to news agencies ANP and Belga.

Prévot said Belgium nevertheless took French information about Iranian involvement very seriously. The Belgian investigation is continuing.

France’s foreign ministry said on 9 November that it had attributed an October attack in France to Iran. It said the attack targeted refrigeration controllers used at more than 700 French retail sites. That attribution concerns the French incident, not the attacks in Belgium. France said it would summon Iran’s ambassador and propose new European sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities it says were involved.

The Belgian disruption earlier in November caused temperatures in fridges and freezers to rise, forcing shops to discard food, Nieuws.nl reported. Delhaize told the Associated Press that an IT incident had affected refrigeration at several dozen stores, mostly in Belgium but also in Luxembourg. Carrefour said a cyberattack had hit 15 of its more than 700 Belgian stores.

Ahold Delhaize, the parent company of Delhaize, is also investigating and said it could not yet share further details.