France accuses Russia of a decade’s worth of high-profile cyberattacks

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 leak of President Emmanuel Macron’s emails in 2017. On Tuesday, France’s Foreign Ministry formally attributed those cyberattacks and several others to APT28, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) hacking unit also known as Fancy Bear, best known in America for leaking Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and sustained cyberattacks on U.S. political operations. APT28’s activities in France followed the same playbook: the “Macron leaks” were published the day before France’s presidential election in the hopes of swaying voters, and the faked ISIS broadcast hijacking, which took place in the wake of the 2 ... Read full article.