French Government Agencies Hit By DDoS Attack

Since the weekend, numerous French government agency websites have been the targets of a DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service Attack. The Record has details:

A number of French government agencies have been hit by “intense” cyberattacks, the prime minister’s office announced on Monday.

The nature of the attacks, which began on Sunday night, has not been confirmed although the description is consistent with distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

The French government said the attack was “conducted using familiar technical means but of unprecedented intensity.”

DDoS attacks are not capable of stealing information, although they can prevent people from accessing a network resource because they flood the servers with junk requests.

Ken Westin, Field CISO, Panther Labs had this comment:

French companies and government agencies should be vigilant, although DDoS attacks themselves may pose limited risk, they’re also often a smokescreen for more sophisticated attacks where intrusion into networks occurs. The DDoS activities can reveal vulnerabilities, as well as an organization’s counter measures, and distract defenders from a more serious threat.

The Record story seems to imply that the French government has this under control. And hopefully I won’t be back in a few months saying that they’ve been pwned by hackers or something like that.

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