Intelligence

French Minister Le Drian on cyber espionage: France is not immune, ready to hack back

Defense Minister Le Drian comments expressed concerns about cyber attacks against defense systems and warns of hacking campaigns on the upcoming elections.

According to the Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian France defense was targeted by thousands of attacks in 2016. France thwarted more than 24,000 cyber attacks against Defence systems last year.

The Minister confirmed that thousands of attacks from external sources targeted the defense architecture, including France’s drone systems, but all the attacks have been repelled.

The number of cyber attacks in France has increased in a significant way substantially across the last three years. According to Mr Le Drian, hacking attacks represents a serious threat to national infrastructure.

The French Defence Minister revealed that cyber attacks were doubling every year and expressed concerns about possible offensives against this year’s presidential election.

In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, the French Minister said that France “should not be naive”.

The Minister warns of possible cyber attacks like the ones that targeted the 2016 US Presidential Election.

In France, the conservative candidate Francois Fillon has been praised by Russian president Vladimir Putin due to its intention to intensify the relationship with the Kremlin. On the other side, the candidate Marine Le Pen is in total opposition to Russia, for this reason, the experts believe that hackers could target him and his party.

Relations between Russia and France are not good due to the position of President Hollande on the dispute between Russia and Ukraine in the 2014 Crimean Crysis.

President Hollande also blamed Russia of war crimes over its bombardment of the Syrian city of Aleppo.

The Minister is overseeing an overhaul of the cyber-security operations conducted by his Government.

“Our services have discussed the subject, if only to learn lessons for the future,” said Le Drian, who also referred to a cyber attack against the 2015 French TV station TV5Monde.

According to many security firms, including FireEye, the Russian APT 28 group was involved in the attack against the French TV station.

According to security experts at FireEye, the Russian ATP28 (also known as Pawn Storm, Tsar Team, Fancy Bear and Sednit) may have used the name of ISIS as a diversionary strategy, the experts noticed a number of similarities in the TTPs used by the Russian group and the one who breached the network at TV5Monde.

I found very interesting the posture of the French Minister, he is aware that foreign hacker could break into national infrastructure, but he also contemplates the possibility to strike back the attackers.He said the French army’s number of “digital soldiers” would be doubled to 2,600 by 2019, with

Le Drian confirmed that the number of “digital soldiers” working for the French defense would be doubled to 2,600 by 2019,  600 cyber experts will joint to the cyber army.

“Le Drian said that in case of a cyber attack, the country could respond in kind as well as with conventional weapons.” reported the Reuters Agency.

[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian France, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

Recent Posts

Cisco addressed high-severity flaws in IOS and IOS XE software

Cisco addressed multiple vulnerabilities in IOS and IOS XE software that can be exploited to…

3 hours ago

Google: China dominates government exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities in 2023

Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Mandiant reported a surge in the number of actively…

9 hours ago

Google addressed 2 Chrome zero-days demonstrated at Pwn2Own 2024

Google addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities in the Chrome web browser that have been demonstrated during…

21 hours ago

INC Ransom stole 3TB of data from the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland

The INC Ransom extortion group hacked the National Health Service (NHS) of Scotland and is threatening…

1 day ago

CISA adds Microsoft SharePoint bug disclosed at Pwn2Own to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds a Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability disclosed at the…

1 day ago

The DDR Advantage: Real-Time Data Defense

This is the advantage of Data Detection and Response (DDR) for organizations aiming to build…

1 day ago

This website uses cookies.