Belgium’s interior minister, Bernard Quintin, indicated this Thursday that the country’s security services have detected signs pointing to a possible involvement of groups of computer hackers linked to Iran in the recent cyberattacks against the refrigeration systems of several supermarket chains, although the Federal Prosecutor’s Office keeps open an investigation to determine precisely who is behind these actions.
"In Belgium, the security services report indications of possible links with known Iranian actors. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office continues to investigate these elements", Quintin said in statements collected by the Belga agency, after French authorities attributed this week to a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard the similar attacks recorded in October in France.
The Belgian official has stressed that the country’s authorities take these incidents "very seriously" and that they are mobilizing "all the resources necessary to identify the threat." "There is no reason to panic, but we remain especially vigilant", he added, insisting that the priority is to strengthen the protection of the affected infrastructures.
Later, sources from Belgium’s Ministry of the Interior told Europa Press that Quintin’s statements do not amount to an official attribution of the cyberattacks to Iran, but rather are limited to reflecting the existence of elements that suggest a possible involvement of groups with connections to that country, pending progress in the judicial investigations.
Along the same lines, sources from Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told this agency that the investigation into the cyberattacks is still ongoing and that it is still premature to establish firm conclusions about their authorship, so for now they avoid directly pointing to Iran as responsible for the incidents.
The attacks, detected in early November, affected the refrigeration and freezing systems of dozens of supermarkets in Belgium, including Delhaize, Carrefour and Spar outlets, generating unusual increases in temperature that forced the removal and disposal of numerous food products for safety reasons. Incidents with similar characteristics have also been recorded in other European countries, such as France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland.
The statements by the head of Belgium’s Interior Ministry come after the Paris Prosecutor’s Office attributed last Monday the cyberattacks carried out in October against about 700 French establishments to a cyberwar unit linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, while the French Government has called for a coordinated response at European level, including the option of new sanctions against those responsible.