Some sites were restored but the paralysis lasted a few hours. Several websites of French cities and departments including that of the city of Nice were the target of an attack carried out by a group of hackers on Tuesday, December 31.
This hacker group “NoName05716” claimed responsibility for these computer attacks, claiming to have acted in retaliation for French support for Ukraine. He was already known for having hacked the National Assembly website a few months ago.
The investigation entrusted to the DGSI
This Tuesday evening, the Paris prosecutor's office indicated that it had taken up these facts, and the investigation was entrusted to the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).
Investigations were opened to hindrance to an organized band automated data processing system (STAD)said the public prosecutor.
On its X account, the hacker group also claimed attacks against the sites of the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Pau, Nîmes, NiceAngers, Le Havre, Montpellier, as well as those of the Landes department, French Polynesia and New Caledonia, but they were still accessible on Tuesday.
The mayor of the city of Nice, Christian Estrosi, confirmed in a message posted on X that the city site had been targeted by an attack. This Tuesday at 5:40 p.m., the site was still inaccessible.
According to the hackers' Telegram channel, these attacks are “gifts to Russophobic France” in response to the aid granted to Ukraine by France. “Ukraine received more than 150 million euros from Denmark, France and Lithuania to support the defense industry (…) We decided to “congratulate” Russophobic France on the occasion of the new year”lit.
A simple process
DDoS attacks, “by denial of service”, are a mode of action regularly used by NoName. Their process is relatively simple. “The distributed denial of service attack is the act of sending a lot of automatic requests to a website made by robots which have no intention of consulting the site at all but which saturate it so that people who would legitimately want to consult it cannot do so”explains Benoît Grunemwald, cybersecurity expert at ESET, a company specializing in the field.
Such attacks do not have the aim or consequence of stealing personal data. For Benoît Grunemwald, these are above all propaganda operations: “This gives the impression of a climate of digital insecurity.”
