French state services hit by ‘intense’ cyberattack

Several French state bodies have been hit with cyberattacks of "unprecedented intensity", Prime Minister Gabriel Attal's office said on Monday, while insisting the government had been able to contain the impact.

Published: 11 March 2024 17:47 CET

French state services hit by 'intense' cyberattack

The entrance of Hotel Matignon, the official residence of the French prime minister in Paris on July 6, 2021. (Photo by THOMAS COEX / POOL / AFP)

“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 told AFP that the attacks “are not currently attributable to Russia,” an obvious suspect for many given Paris’ support for Kyiv since the invasion of Ukraine.

The PM’s staff added that a “crisis cell has been activated to deploy countermeasures”, meaning “the impact of these attacks has been reduced for most services and access to state websites restored.”

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

The latest cyberattack to hit France follows a warning from Attal’s defence adviser last week that the Paris Olympics and European Parliament elections this summer could be “significant targets”.

Meanwhile Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said last month that protection against “sabotage and cyberattack” by Russia should be stepped up, in an internal note seen by AFP that said his ministry was top of Moscow’s target list.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.