Massive Cyberattacks Hit French Government Agencies

Massive cyberattacks hit French government agencies

Pierluigi Paganini
March 11, 2024

A series of “intense” cyberattacks hit multiple French government agencies, revealed the prime minister’s office.

“Several “intense” cyberattacks targeted multiple French government agencies since Sunday night, as disclosed by the prime minister’s office.”

The French minister’s office did not provide details about the attacks, however, the French agencies were likely hit with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The attacks were not complex, government experts said they were conducted using familiar technical means despite the intensity of the offensives.

“Several French state bodies have been hit with cyberattacks of “unprecedented intensity”, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s office said Monday, March 11, while insisting the government had been able to contain the impact.” reported the French newspaper Le Monde. “Many ministerial services were targeted” from Sunday “using familiar technical means but of unprecedented intensity,” Attal’s office said, without providing further details of the targets.”

A security source informed Agence France-Presse that government experts cannot attribute the attacks to Russia.

The PM’s staff confirmed that the French government has activated a crisis cell to deploy countermeasures. The staff confirmed that the impact of these attacks has been reduced for most services and access to state websites has been restored.

“Specialist services including information security agency ANSSI were “implementing filtering measures until the attacks are over”” continues Le Monde.

Even if French authorities did not attribute the attack to Russia-linked threat actors, multiple Pro-Russia hacking continue to threaten the French government for its support to Ukraine.

Today Pro-Russia Group NoName announced a series of successful attacks against French authorities.

“As part of a joint attack with our colleagues, we looked into France and put down a number of state sites and subdomains of the French energy company EDF” the group announced on its Telegram channel. “Subdomains of the website of Électricité de France (EDF, “Électricité de France”), France’s state-owned electricity company and the world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants”