{"text":[[{"start":10.44,"text":"France’s foreign minister has accused Iranian authorities of “extremely serious” recent cyber attacks targeting supermarkets’ commercial refrigeration systems, raising fears of threats to the country’s food security."}],[{"start":23.4,"text":"The Paris prosecutor’s office on Monday said it was opening a judicial investigation into the head of Shahid Kaveh, a cyber unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, his two deputies and others. It added it was seeking international arrest warrants."}],[{"start":37.94,"text":"“I am now able to confirm that the responsibility for this attack was the Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic republic of Iran,” said Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, adding the attack was “extremely serious” and of “unprecedented aggressiveness”."}],[{"start":52.72,"text":"“The attack cannot go unanswered,” he said. France had summoned the Iranian ambassador and planned to enforce sanctions at the European level against those responsible for the attacks, he added. “We will take all other measures — proportional and necessary, public or nonpublic — to answer this attack and deter anyone who would want to repeat it.”"}],[{"start":72.64,"text":"Iran has formidable offensive cyber capabilities. Earlier this year, Tehran was widely blamed for cyber attacks on US water infrastructure, which affected at least 12 states and caused concern in the White House. Although the US government did not officially attribute the incidents to Tehran, those attacks were also thought to have been orchestrated by the Revolutionary Guards, in retaliation for US attacks on Iran."}],[{"start":95.8,"text":"French magistrates will probe allegations of two offences: fraudulent access to an automated data-processing system by an organised criminal group; and damage to such a system by an organised criminal group, the prosecutor’s office said."}],[{"start":109.76,"text":"“Both offences are aggravated by the fact that they were committed with the aim of serving a foreign power, in this case Iran,” it added."}],[{"start":117.16,"text":"The Iranian embassy in Paris declined to comment."}],[{"start":120.12,"text":"More than 700 retail sites across France were targeted in an overnight cyber attack on October 11 to 12 targeting their fridge systems, causing tens of millions of euros’ worth of food losses and the outbreak of at least 20 fires as temperatures were remotely increased to as high as 80C."}],[{"start":137.48,"text":"Major retailers including Carrefour, Intermarché, Monoprix, Cooperative U and Netto were affected after older models of Dixell and Danfoss fridge systems were left vulnerable to attacks. The head of France’s cyber security agency ANSSI told the Senate last month that it appeared weak passwords and a lack of rudimentary cyber defences enabled the attackers to gain access to the connected systems."}],[{"start":162.36,"text":"Subsequent attacks hit supermarket refrigerators in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Belgium and Ireland."}],[{"start":168.8,"text":"Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence at cyber security firm Sophos, said Iran’s state-backed hacking groups had a record of compromising weak or default credentials to access internet-exposed systems."}],[{"start":181.76,"text":"“The attribution made by the French is consistent with a strand of Iranian activity where the value of an attack lies as much in signalling as in the immediate damage,” he said. “Disrupting refrigeration is highly visible, relatively tangible and potentially scalable.”"}],[{"start":196.98,"text":"The French prosecutor’s office said its initial probe into the incidents in France, in partnership with the nation’s anti-cyber crimes office and domestic intelligence division DGSI had identified “a method of attack characteristic of this unit” of the Revolutionary Guards, as well as the use of Farsi and IP addresses linked to terminals in Iran."}],[{"start":217.44,"text":"Attacks on industrial hardware such as freezers and water pumps, known in the cyber security industry as operational technology or OT, have been documented since the early 2000s but typically required highly specialised knowledge. OT cyber security specialists say they have never seen hundreds of similar devices attacked at the same time, as happened in France last month."}],[{"start":239.36,"text":"The incidents have occurred at a time of rising public concern that advances in AI technology will drive a wave of cyber attacks. However, it is not known whether AI tools were used in the freezer attacks."}],[{"start":256.04,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1794279346_3588.mp3"}