{"id":61594,"date":"2025-04-30T00:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/61594\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T00:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T00:49:07","slug":"france-accuses-russia-of-engineering-years-of-high-profile-cyberattacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/61594\/","title":{"rendered":"France accuses Russia of engineering years of high-profile cyberattacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">In an unprecedented display of diplomatic aggression, French authorities publicly accused Russia of sponsoring several high-profile cyber attacks on French entities for over a decade to gather intelligence and destabilize the country. The incidents include everything from a faked Islamic State takeover of a French television broadcast signal in 2015 to the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/4\/24\/15413862\/france-election-russia-hackers-macron-fancy-bear\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> leak of President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s emails in 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">On Tuesday, France\u2019s Foreign Ministry <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/francediplo_EN\/status\/1917251609916015011\">formally attributed those cyberattacks<\/a> and several others to APT28, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) hacking unit also known as Fancy Bear, best known in America for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/7\/25\/12274320\/dnc-email-hack-russia-trump-putin-wikileaks-hillary-clinton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leaking Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails<\/a> during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and sustained cyberattacks on U.S. political operations. APT28\u2019s activities in France followed the same playbook: the \u201cMacron leaks\u201d were published the day before France\u2019s presidential election in the hopes of swaying voters, and the faked ISIS broadcast hijacking, which took place in the wake of the 2015 Bataclan terrorist attacks, were intended to \u201ccreate a panic in France.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">This is the first time France has publicly attributed a cyber attack to a foreign government\u2019s intelligence service, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/international\/article\/2025\/04\/29\/cyberattacks-france-officially-attributes-hacking-to-russia-for-the-first-time_6740745_4.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">according to Le Monde<\/a>. The diplomatic environment has shifted profoundly, however: Vladimir Putin refuses to end his years-long invasion of Ukraine without getting to keep the territory he\u2019s seized \u2013 an untenable position for both Ukraine and the EU, which views Russian territorial gains as a threat to the EU\u2019s geopolitical integrity. Russian cyberattacks pose an additional threat, both to their national security apparatus and election integrity.<br \/>In an interview the day before the Ministry\u2019s public declaration, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/france\/article\/2025\/04\/28\/macron-sets-10-day-horizon-to-amplify-western-pressure-on-russia_6740712_7.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Macron told the media<\/a> that he believed that France and their Western allies \u2013 including President Donald Trump \u2013 would increase pressure on Russia \u201cover the next eight to ten days\u201d to accept their terms. He also announced that France and Poland would soon sign a \u201cfriendship treaty\u201d that will include joint efforts to combat Russian election interference via cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns in both countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an unprecedented display of diplomatic aggression, French authorities publicly accused Russia of sponsoring several high-profile cyber attacks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,12,46,285,811,326],"class_list":{"0":"post-61594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-policy","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-security","15":"tag-tech"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114424169286118119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}