“France officially attributed on Tuesday, for the first time, the Russian military intelligence services as responsible for cyber attacks against French interests, including the sabotage of TV5Monde channel in 2015 and the hacking of emails from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team during the 2017 campaign, according to AFP, cited by Agerpres.”The Russian military intelligence service (GRU) has been conducting a cyber-offensive operation against France called APT28 for a few years now,” stated French Diplomacy Chief Jean-Noël Barrot in a post on the X platform. “It has targeted ten French entities since 2021,” Barrot added, assuring that “in the cyber space, France monitors, blocks and fights against its adversaries.” APT28, an acronym for Advanced Persistent Threat, is a known Russian actor in the US and European Union countries which have already imposed sanctions on individuals or entities connected to this group who are attempting to destabilize public opinion, according to these countries.Facing an increasingly intensifying hybrid threat from Russia, France has decided to publicly release the latest investigations included in a report by the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (Anssi), which details the attacks that occurred between 2021 and the end of 2024. The previous report was published in October 2023. A sports organization involved in organizing the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was also targeted by APT28, as specified by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement. Previously, the video message explains, “in 2017, during the presidential elections, APT28 participated in a massive hacking operation. The objective: to spread uncertainty and influence public opinion.” “Thousands of documents were stolen and released in hopes of manipulating voters, but the maneuver was ultimately unsuccessful in impacting the electoral process,” the message continues, referring to the “Macron Leaks” scandal. The hacking and dissemination of thousands of internal documents from the entourage of then future President Emmanuel Macron, right before the second round of the presidential elections in 2017, did not prevent Macron from ultimately being elected president, over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.”
