The Paris Prosecutor’s Office has made public that it has initiated a judicial investigation against the head of the Iranian group Shahid Kaveh, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, for the cyberattack carried out in early October that left numerous refrigerators in French supermarkets out of service and caused the loss of tons of food products.
"After the investigations carried out (...) the cybercrime section of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office opens today a judicial investigation on charges of fraudulent attacks on an automated data processing system by an organized group and damage caused by dangerous means to persons by an organized group," Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau explained in a statement.
"These two offenses are aggravated by the circumstance of having been committed with the aim of serving a foreign power, in this case Iran, in addition to participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing an offense," it continues.
The Paris Public Prosecution directs its suspicions mainly against the person in charge of the Iranian group Shahid Kavé, a unit that depends on the Information Security Command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Its two main collaborators and "any other person who may be identified" have also been included in the proceedings.
French authorities have supported these accusations through several weeks of inquiries by the Office against Cybercrimes and the Directorate of Internal Security, with the support of specialized state services. In this way, it has been possible to determine a "'characteristic 'modus operandi' of the Iranian group' in which the use of the Persian language and IP addresses associated with terminals located in Iranian territory are detected.
The investigation remains open, in particular because several European states suffered a cyberattack of similar characteristics on the past 2 November, which leads the investigators to analyze possible connections between the different incidents.