Published on March 27, 2023 at 7:46 p.m.
National Assembly: the website blocked after being hacked by pro-Russian hackers – ©Lafargue Raphael/ABACA
This Monday, March 27, the website of the National Assembly was inaccessible for a few hours after being the target of pro-Russian hackers.
The site is currently under maintenance. This is the message that could be seen on the website of the National Assembly for several hours this Monday, March 27. It was therefore impossible to consult it. The reason ? He was the target of a group of pro-Russian hackers NoNames057 (16) hostile to President Emmanuel Macron, as reported by “RMC”. Its going offline was caused by a denial of service (DDoS) attack in the morning. Thus, a very high number of connections was caused, resulting in the saturation of the servers and therefore the impossibility of accessing the site.
A response to France’s support for Ukraine
On the Telegram channel, the group of hackers claimed responsibility for this attack. Ivan Fontarensky, the technical director of cyber defense at Thales confirmed that it was a response to 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,” wrote the collective NoName057(16 ) on his Telegram channel. The group also assured that it had attacked the Senate’s website the same day, but without noticeable effect for the moment since it seemed to be working perfectly. Access to the site of the National Assembly was therefore restored around 5 p.m.
At the end of the afternoon, the National Assembly made it known through a press release that this attack had only affected “access to the site and had no consequences on the functioning of the National Assembly, whose session of the day started at 4 p.m. as planned, nor on the data of parliamentarians and agents”, as relayed by “BMF TV”. For her part, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the President of the National Assembly condemned this attack by emphasizing that it was “intolerable that the site of an institution guaranteeing access to public information and the transparency of debates be object of malicious action”.
For some time, France has been the target of several attacks of this type. Last week, the Groupe ADP site was blocked and the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) was also targeted by an attack. According to the Thales threat analysis team, these two waves of attacks were claimed by another group of pro-Russian hackers.