The war in Ukraine led by Russia, whose hackers have already been accused of electoral interference abroad, has so far not given birth to large-scale cyberattacks against the electoral campaign in France, says Laurent Nunez , the intelligence and counter-terrorism coordinator, in an interview published Sunday by the Sunday newspaper. “To date, we have not seen a massive attack targeting a specific candidate or the election campaign in general. But we are on our guard,” he said.
While Moscow finds itself isolated at the international level after its invasion of Ukraine, Paris having virulently criticized President Vladimir Putin, “the greatest caution” remains in order with regard to “possible manipulation of information against Western countries, including France,” he said. But for the moment, “from what we can observe, the informational war is concentrated on the theater of the conflict”, adds Laurent Nunez, several Ukrainian government sites having been victims of a large-scale cyberattack in mid-January.
“All candidates for the Élysée have been made aware of the issue of cyberattacks”
Thousands of internal documents from the entourage of future President Emmanuel Macron had been released on the Internet just before the second round of the 2017 presidential election. According to the daily Le Monde and specialized researchers, the hackers of “Fancy Bear” ( or APT28), linked to Russian intelligence, were behind the attack. This same group had been accused by American intelligence of having interfered in the 2016 presidential election in order to favor Donald Trump, who was finally elected. Tens of thousands of messages from the Democratic Party and those close to its candidate Hillary Clinton were then posted online.
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The German government was also the victim of a major attack in 2018, organized according to German media by another group of Russian hackers called “Snake”, also linked to Moscow.
At the end of 2021, the State launched Viginum, a government structure responsible for tracking down foreign digital interference. “All the candidates for the Élysée were seen in February and made aware of the issue of cyberattacks in depth”, explains Laurent Nunez, recalling that the regional elections in 2021 had seen the development of “inauthentic accounts where France was presented as a failed state.