Russian hackers strike the site of the French National Assembly – POLITICO

PARIS — The website of France’s National Assembly was taken down on Monday in a cyberattack claimed by pro-Russian hackers.

“We have decided to repeat our recent trip to France, where the protests against (French President Emmanuel) Macron, who has decided to give a damn about the French and continues to ‘serve’ Ukrainian neo-Nazis, are still not calming down” , said the hacker group. NoName057(16) wrote on his Telegram channel.

The pro-Kremlin group has been behind a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent months, including on Polish airport and e-government websites after Warsaw delivered Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but also against targets in Denmark, Czech Republic. Republic and Lithuania.

Officials of the National Assembly told franceinfo they could not yet confirm that the cyberattack came from Russian hackers but were working on “identification”.

The hacker group claimed to have targeted the French institution because of Macron’s wildly unpopular pension reform – French citizens took to the streets in large numbers to protest against government plans to raise the retirement age retirement – but also against Macron’s use of a constitutional tool that allowed him to pass legislation without a vote in parliament. Last week, French MPs barely refused to overthrow the government in a tight vote of confidence.

Russian groups have a history of backing French protests and anti-establishment demonstrations, including backing the yellow vest movement, which rocked Macron’s first term as president.

“By the way, it was the actions of this French authority that served as a catalyst for mass protests in the country – a week ago the National Assembly rejected a vote of no confidence in the French government,” said writes NoName057(16) on Telegram.

Monday afternoon, the website of the National Assembly was still under maintenance. The hacker group boasted on Telegram that the site “cannot recover all day after our attack”. They also claimed to have targeted the Senate website, but it was still available Monday afternoon.