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Surfshark’s Research shows that most cyber incidents in France have unidentified origins
September 2024 by Surfshark
Around 83% of cyber incidents in France have no identified country of origin, the research by the cybersecurity company Surfshark shows.
Key findings:
• Since February 2023 - there were 64 cases of cyber incidents targeting France (on average, three per month).
• 11 of the 64 cases were found to have been attributed to at least one origin country. For six of those, Russia was identified as the origin country of the initiators.
• The other countries identified as origin countries of incident initiators against France were China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, Bangladesh, and France itself.
• State institutions in France were affected by 35 of the 64 incidents. An example of this was targeting the Réunion des Musées Nationaux network, which included around 40 French museums during the Summer Olympics, with ransomware.
• The next most frequently affected sector was critical infrastructure, which was impacted by 30 incidents. For example, in June of 2024, an unknown threat actor compromised the data of French Geopost.
• The most common type of incident was hijacking with misuse (when an unauthorized actor gained privileged access to a system and then caused other issues). For example, in May of 2024, unknown hackers gained access to the X account of the French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra on May 10, 2024, who is responsible for organizing this year’s Summer Olympics. Her account was then used to send phishing messages.
