As the Paris Olympic Games approach, France is once again targeted by a massive cyberattack.
Several state services have, since Sunday, been the subject of computer attacks of “unprecedented intensity” but their impact at this stage “has been reduced” and access to state sites “restored”. says Matignon.
A crisis unit was activated on Sunday evening “to deploy countermeasures and guarantee the continuity of IT services”.
“The mobilized teams from DINUM (interministerial digital directorate) and ANSSI (national information systems security agency) continue to implement filtering measures until the end of these attacks,” they said. specified the Prime Minister's services.
Ministry of Labor agents no longer had access to computer services this afternoon, and only had intermittent access this morning.
Other ministries appear to have been affected.
The Anonymous Sudan group, supporting Russia and several Islamist causes, claimed responsibility for the action on its Telegram account, like other hacker collectives.
Telegram Anonymous Sudan
Anonymous Sudan - whose claim is "to be taken with a grain of salt", according to a government official - says it has targeted the state interministerial network (RIE) and boasts of disruptions within the ministries of Culture, Health, Economy and Finance, Ecological Transition, the Prime Minister's services as well as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC).
The hackers carried out a denial of service (DDoS) attack, which aims to make a server inaccessible by sending multiple requests until it saturates.
“There are constant denial of service attacks but these seem better targeted on the interministerial network of the State which is in the midst of technical change” explains Fanch Francis, co-founder of the cybersecurity start-up NANO Corp and former analyst at the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
This type of offensive has become a scourge for companies and organizations in recent years.
“It’s a low-cost cyberattack that’s very easy to launch and very painful to deal with in the first few seconds.
Hacktivist groups like Anonymous Sudan who practice them are part of the daily sores of cybersecurity.
The problem is to detect them upstream without pausing your computer system for nothing,” continues Fanch Francis.
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The attackers would use a service put online a few weeks ago called InfraShutDown, which allows you to “rent” these basic attacks which saturate computer systems.
“It costs around $500 per hour to bring down a website,” explains Matthieu Dierick, cybersecurity expert for the company
F5.
“The attack was brutal and lasted and the ministries are not ready to manage this because they cannot transfer part of these illicit connections to a private external service provider who could protect them,” explains this computer network expert.
A government source puts the scope of this type of offensive into perspective: “The effects of such an attack primarily affect the image of the targeted organization and can cause discomfort for the user in the short term.
However, such an attack does not generate major impacts on the website or information systems of the targeted organization.
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The motivations of Anonymous Sudan - a "non-state but generally pro-Russian" collective, according to a government official - are not clearly communicated, but the group appears to support Russia as well as several Islamist causes.
“Without being definitive, because caution is required, it is likely that this comes from the pro-Russian sphere,” continues this source.
“Anonymous Sudan has joined forces with other hacktivist groups like UserSec or NoName52, which are openly pro-Russian,” adds Clément Domingo, alias SaxX, cybersecurity engineer.