Pro-Russian activists launched cyberattacks on Tuesday December 31 and Wednesday January 1 against several websites of French cities, communities and companies. The regional council of Centre-Val de Loire, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of Hauts-de-France, and the portal of the city of Montpellier were thus targeted on Wednesday. If the damage seems limited at this stage, the Paris prosecutor's office has opened an investigation. Franceinfo takes stock of what we know.
Several sites made inaccessible
On Wednesday, hackers from the group named NoName057(016) attacked several communities. The regional council of Centre-Val de Loire, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of Hauts-de-France, the portal of the city of Montpellier and the departments of Eure and Aude were thus targeted. By mid-afternoon, the sites of these departments were still inaccessible, as was that of the Ministry of Justice. That of Enercoop, a French energy cooperative, was also affected.
Tuesday, the sites of the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Pau, Nîmes, Nice, Angers, Le Havre, Montpellier, Tarbes, Marseille were targeted, as well as those of the Landes department, Haute-Garonne, French Polynesia or even New Caledonia.
Damage limited for the moment
The same process was used for all of these cyberattacks: the denial of service (DDoS) attack, a method of flooding a site with connections until it crashes. However, there are no data leaks or thefts in this type of attack. The Paris public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation, entrusted to the DGSI, the General Directorate of Internal Security.
Investigations were opened for obstructing an automated data processing system (STAD) by an organized gang, the public prosecutor added to AFP. On X, the mayor of the city of Nice, Christian Estrosi, declared on Tuesday that“at this stage, no data leak has been detected”, and that he was going to file a complaint. The Marseille town hall also announced that it would file a complaint.
An already known group of pirates
The pro-Russian hacker group NoName057(016) claimed responsibility for the cyberattacks on X. “We decided to congratulate Russophobic France on the coming New Year, and as a gift we present DDos shells to the sites”also declared this group in a message published on Telegram. This group, active since March 2022, says it carried out these actions in retaliation for France's support for Ukraine in the war against Russia.
In 2023, this same NoName collective had already launched denial of service attacks against the National Assembly and Senate sites, making them temporarily inaccessible. NoName is also known to have targeted sites of institutions in other European countries, Canada, the Baltics, as well as Ukrainian media.
