The French government said on Monday that several services had been targeted by a cyber attack of “unprecedented intensity” and a special crisis center had been activated to restore online services.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s office said in a statement that the attack began Sunday night and that several ministries were affected, without providing further details. By Monday afternoon, “the impact of the attack on most services had been mitigated and access to government sites had been restored.”
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A hacker group called Anonymous Sudan, which cybersecurity experts believe is pro-Russian, claimed responsibility in an online post. The French Prime Minister’s Office and the Digital Security Agency did not comment on the claims or provide details about what was targeted or what damage was caused.
On December 12, 2023, Gabriel Attal, France’s Minister of Education and Youth and currently the country’s Prime Minister, speaks during questions to the government at the National Assembly in Paris. (BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images)
French officials said these are denial-of-service attacks, a common type of cyber attack that floods a site with data in order to overwhelm it and take it offline.
The French government is pushing to strengthen its cyber defenses ahead of this summer’s Paris Olympics and in the wake of recent ransomware attacks, including on hospitals in 2021.
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The French government has accused Russia of waging a long-running campaign of online manipulation against Ukraine’s Western backers, including by mirroring the website of the French Foreign Ministry. President Emmanuel Macron has taken an increasingly hard line against Moscow and the war started in Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
