The functioning of the Senate website has been “disturbed” by one “cyberattack of a certain magnitude”. In any case, this is the content of an email sent to all elected officials and their collaborators this Friday, May 5. In all likelihood, this would be a simple denial of service attack, consisting of overwhelming the site with access requests, resulting in its inaccessibility. A situation certainly embarrassing, but much less serious than an intrusion on the infrastructures or the deployment of a malware.
“Access to the Senate website has been disrupted since this morning, our team is fully mobilized to remedy the malfunctions. We apologize for the inconvenience caused”simply commented the Senate on Twitter.
The attack was claimed a few minutes later on the Telegram channel of the hacker group NoName. Created in March 2022, this group of pro-Russian hackers generally attacks Ukrainian websites, but also American and European government agencies, media and private companies that support Ukraine. This is not the first time that pro-Russian hackers have targeted French institutions. A few days earlier, several town halls had been targeted.
The Senate website is working normally again.