Yet another Hacker News

Iran was behind cyber-attack on French supermarket freezers, Paris says

39 points disenchanted 1 hour ago 26 comments

gnabgib 1 hour ago | parent

Reuters French officials suspect Iran is behind refrigerator hacks, sources say (3 points, 3 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50427517

BBC France accuses Iran of supermarket fridge hacking (7 points, 2 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50428440

gouv.fr French CERT and Foreign Ministry Now Attributing Fridge Attacks to Iran (2 points, 2 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50428719

CNN France blames Iran for 'unprecedented' supermarket fridge cyberattack (7 points, 1 hour ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50429252

verdverm 1 hour ago | parent

unless we learn this is true... https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/how-the-military-will-hack...

tl;dr - about more than election hacking, the possibility that the US military is behind various hacks and influence operations by faking being Russia/Iran/NK

lifestyleguru 48 minutes ago | parent

While I believe that Russia might have serious hacking capability, then Iran much less so, but accusing NK is laughable to be honest. America with Israel though? They pwn Europe completely.

verdverm 39 minutes ago | parent

NK just pulled off the biggest crypto robbery ever. But its not all about hacking, influence operations are significant too. Ask Jensen.

The accusation here is that the US is doing the bad things while pretending to be other APTs. As an American, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this turned out to be true, very double agent-esce and inline with the hubris, especially under this administration.

jmclnx 20 minutes ago | parent

Russia, maybe, NK doubtful and Iran ? I do not think Iran is that stupid since in general many EU Countries are not that thrilled about Israel. But to me, it will be hard to know got 100% for sure.

>This included "the use of Farsi and IP addresses traced back to devices located in Iran"

I guess they were caught then. I heard of software that can hide or change these things called "IP addresses", but I guess using it is way too hard for organizations with plenty of resources :

xvxvx 41 minutes ago | parent

So it was Israel then…

pona-a 38 minutes ago | parent

Does it even matter? If you expose a vulnerable software to the open internet, it's gonna get hacked, and it doesn't matter if it's a script-kiddy from Russia, UK, or a North Korean spy. This was an ethically disclosed vulnerability, patched months before the incident in question. Update your stuff!

bawolff 35 minutes ago | parent

huh.

I was betting on it being russia.

As a grey-zone war tactic, i feel like it doesnt super make a lot of sense for iran. France isn't super involved, so its more likely to draw them in then make them think the costs of supporting USA is unacceptable.

On the other hand, not much of Iran's strategy has made much long term sense and more has felt like desperation from a gov that is out of options and wants to go down swinging, so i suppose this fits with that.

pmarino90 27 minutes ago | parent

Considering the help Iran is getting from Russia I am honestly not that surprised.

bawolff 24 minutes ago | parent

i mostly meant from a motive perspective.

Russia going, nudge nudge shame about those freezers, maybe if you stopped giving aid to ukraine those freezeers will stop breaking, is a strategy that maybe could work with little downside because what is france going to do? double sanction russia?

But for iran, there is not a lot of room for france to move to be more pro iran that isnt high cost, but lots of low cost ways to be more anti iran, so it seems like a bad strat.

rdtsc 21 minutes ago | parent

Then next level would be to think if this were also a false-flag attack who would have wanted to look like Iran did it.

bawolff 16 minutes ago | parent

This would be a terrible false flag. I know people like conspiracy theories, but nothing about this suggests false flag.

rdtsc 9 minutes ago | parent

> I know people like conspiracy theories, but nothing about this suggests false flag.

I am not saying it is, just interesting to analyze who it would have been if it was. Does it benefit Iran to attack France? I guess? Maybe just a target of opportunity. US freezers are just too damn locked down(!). Or does it benefit someone else to make it look like Iran did it, kind of a thing...

Well you were betting it was Russia, and I kinda expected that as well. But then, yeah, probably Russia would want to boast that they did it as a threat or show of force not make it look like their semi-allies (Iranians) did it.

Ajedi32 21 minutes ago | parent

This has been Iran's strategy throughout the entire war. Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz. They can't really fight back against the US directly, so instead they lash out indiscriminately against anyone or anything that's even remotely friendly to the US.

Matl 10 minutes ago | parent

> Them attacking France isn't any less rational than attacking, say, Qtar, or blockading non-US ships bound for non-US countries transiting the straight of Hormuz

It does make sense if you think about it for longer than 5s - it's about U.S. allies putting pressure on the U.S. to end the war. This whole propaganda about Iran being irrational is so dumb it's embarrassing.

The US is threatening to wipe out Iran's civilization, the EU is very tepid about the whole thing at best. Really sad to see, but not surprising. There's zero consistency or principle involved.

Ajedi32 8 minutes ago | parent

Yes, attacking uninvolved third parties seems like a great way to pressure them to end the war, if by "end the war" you mean joining it on the other side and helping finish you off.

Traditionally that has been how countries tend to respond to military attacks on their soil.

optimalsolver 2 minutes ago | parent

Iran's strategy is what caused the GOP their worst electoral disaster in living memory.

It's also why the US is highly reluctant to return to high-tempo combat.

Roland303 19 minutes ago | parent

Iran russia and china and nk are all working for the same efforts as far as destabilizing the west and ideally turning back the clock on the whole citizens have rights thing that western citizens have been so uppity about and influencing the world with since the 1400's, barring that goal, settling on shitting up the place enough to put an end to western lead global order and returning to an age of regional powers with absolute authority in their spheres of influence. I dont think the attack needs to make sense, the statue of liberty stands in new york harbor, we are the same entity to them, they are at war with us.

mlmonkey 28 minutes ago | parent

I have no idea what tf Iran's leadership is doing.

Israel/Palestine is not their battle anyways; just ignore it and move on! Make peace with Israel, stop supporting Hamas/Hezbollah and just focus on your own problems. What does Iran have to gain from fighting with Israel? It can't be that they hate all Jews, when Iran is one of the few Muslim countries with any Jews left [1].

Just drop it guys, and learn to live in peace. There's a lot more to this world than continuously fighting with each other.

/rant

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Jews

bawolff 18 minutes ago | parent

I think a lot of geopolitics makes more sense if you treat the ethnic divides as "excuses" and instead look at what the parties hope to achieve in terms of power and dominance.

taeric 14 minutes ago | parent

Too many people fall on the confusion between justifications, explanations, and excuses. In particular, it can be hard to find what moves something from one to the other of those terms for a lot of people. It often blurs between perspectives, agreed enemies, agreed allies, and inclusion or omission of extra details.

HappyPanacea 17 minutes ago | parent

They do have things to gain - credibility with the Arab and Sunni Muslim world for fighting against Israel and perhaps defeating it and excuse to operate their proxies and allies. Not to mention they are true believers, and even if they weren't, it doesn't have to be fully rational from your perspective; just from their own.

As for the Jews in Iran, there used to be 150,000 Jews in Iran before the revolution today there are ~9,000. Furthermore IRGC are very much the ideological inheritors of the type of folks who did the Allahdad (God's Justice) Massacre in Mashhad in 1839.

greatgib 13 minutes ago | parent

Both they don't want Israel to be too powerful and at the same time, the war is a good way to keep tight control on their population and kill any rebellion. You ensure that western ideas would not go into the head of the population by enjoying peace and seeing how it is going well in free neighbor countries, it give you a common enemy that you can accuse of everything.

1as5431 18 minutes ago | parent

According to the article the attack came from an Iranian IP address. Well ...

Suppose it wasn't a false flag operation. Why would Iran threaten the EU when the EU was skeptical about the war early this year and suffers from it due to lack of Qatari LNG?

The logical step would be to do diplomatic outreach to the EU.

Now the EU has a casus belli (more like supporting the war rather than participating). It all sounds like the EU is selling the war to its population, but maybe Iran is really that stupid.

krunck 12 minutes ago | parent

We cannot rule out the fanatics running the US had this done to get the EU into the war. More to come, I'm sure.

Jtsummers 8 minutes ago | parent

Russia has demonstrated that they can conduct so-called "hybrid warfare" as long as it doesn't lead to serious injury or death and the response will be meager. But it still creates pain for those targeted nations.

Iran could be seeing that this approach, rather than more blatant attacks, is a useful way to create problems for the US's allies without a lower risk of elevating those US allies to direct enemies. The intention would be to get the US allies to put pressure on the US (in particular) to back out of the US/Israel war on Iran.