The National Assembly was the victim of a denial of service attack which blocked access to its website for a good part of the day on Monday, March 27. The Palais-Bourbon portal was only put back online in the middle of the afternoon, around 4:50 p.m. This obstacle was “without impact on the operation and the data” of the lower house, indicated in a press release the presidency of the deputies.
The computer attack was claimed by the collective of pro-Russian hackers NoName057(16), a claim spotted by Numerama. This group thus explained on its telegram channels that it had carried out this action against Emmanuel Macron, who “decided to make fun of the French and continues to satisfy the Ukrainian neo-Nazis”.
group of hacktivists
Also known as NoName05716, 05716nnm or Nnm05716, according to cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, this group of hacktivists specializes in denial of service attacks against Ukraine or the infrastructure or institutions of member countries. ‘NATO.
For example, the group was observed attacking the sites of candidates for the Czech presidential election of 2023 or a Polish government website. In France, these hacktivists have also claimed responsibility for attacks against the site of the industrialist Naval Group (wrongly confused with the national gendarmerie) and against the National Institute of Labour, Employment and Vocational Training.
According to Avast, NoName057(16) uses the Bobik botnet network to carry out its denial of service attacks, with mixed results – the company estimated its success rate at 40%. As SentinelOne points out, the group has also set up a program, Ddosia, which makes it possible to remunerate the main contributors to DDoS attacks in crypto-assets.
Already targeted in 2016
Denial of service attacks are one of the modes of action favored by hacktivists. Technically quite simple, they make a lot of noise while their impact remains most of the time very anecdotal.
The National Assembly had already been targeted, as was the Senate site, by a denial of service attack in 2016, against the backdrop of a challenge to French government policy. The two sites were then briefly disrupted in this attack claimed by an account of the Anonymous movement.
The investigation entrusted to the DGSI, competent for the attacks against these institutions, had concluded with two arrests a few months later. One of the two defendants had been tried by default in January 2020 by the Paris Criminal Court. This young Frenchman then residing in Belgium had been sentenced to six months in prison for this obstruction of an automated data processing system.