The websites of the French National Assembly and Senate were attacked on Monday by pro-Russian hackers, in retaliation for France’s support for Ukraine, a new example of the cyberwar between Russia and Ukraine.
For several hours, the Assembly site remained “under maintenance”. The Senate website remained functional, but that of the Children’s Parliament was also inaccessible.
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed these three attacks and announced the opening of an investigation for “obstructing the operation of an automated data processing system”.
Blocked until 4.50 p.m., the Assembly site was the victim of a “denial of service” attack (saturation of requests) carried out by the collective of pro-Russian hackers NoName057, created in March 2022, specified at Agence France-Presse (AFP) Ivan Fontarensky, technical director of cyber defense at Thales.
NoName claimed responsibility for these attacks on its Telegram channel, mixing criticism against the management of anti-pension reform protests and against France’s support for Ukraine.
“We have decided to reiterate our recent trip to France, where the protests against Macron, who has decided not to care about the French and continues to serve the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, are not calming down,” the group wrote on Telegram, echoing the rhetoric of the Kremlin.
“It is intolerable that the site of an institution guaranteeing access to public information and the transparency of debates is the object of malicious action”, reacted the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet. . The attack remained limited to access to the site, and had no consequences on the data of parliamentarians.
Cyber harassment
NoName is one of 61 identified pro-Russian hacker collectives that since the invasion of Ukraine have been attacking institutions in allied countries, particularly in Western Europe, explained Nicolas Quintin, chief analyst of the Thales “threat analysis” team, with some fifty experts worldwide.
They usually act through denial of service, basic cyberattacks. “It’s cyberbullying,” commented Ivan Fontarensky, to AFP.
France has experienced several such attacks recently. Last week were targeted the site of Aéroports de Paris, temporarily blocked, as well as that of the DGSI, the French intelligence services.
These two waves were claimed by another group of pro-Russian hackers, Anonymous Sudan, say the experts from Thales, who follow their communications and publish on Wednesday the results of a year of cyberwar between Russia and Ukraine.
These new types of cybercriminals operate ransom-free and recruit sympathizers everywhere. They can have several tens or hundreds of members, sometimes paid in the event of a successful attack. They are structured like multinationals, with HR management and job offers, without really hiding.
Their workings came to light when in February 2022, at the start of the Russian attack, the Conti hacker group split between pro-Russians and pro-Ukrainians, leading one member to leak internal conversations.
Without it being possible to know if they are remotely controlled by the Kremlin or if they simply attract pro-Russian activists, they particularly target Western European, Baltic and Scandinavian countries. In early 2023, NoName launched attacks against German institutions when Berlin allowed Poland to deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and during the Czech elections against the site of Europhile and Atlanticist candidate Petr Pavel.
“It is logical that they target France in the atmosphere of the demonstrations against the pension reform”, underlines Thales, alluding to the Russian attempts to destabilize the allies of kyiv.
Denial of service attacks only require a large number of computers running query software, including through hacked computers that operate without the knowledge of their owner.
These “poor man’s cyberattacks” usually only result in temporary blockages. But they can handicap companies if their site is linked to their sales or production system.