‘Large-scale’ cyberattack hits French township, all local services down

The mayor of Pays Fouesnantais, a coastal township in Brittany in northwestern France, announced his municipal authority had been hit by a “large-scale” cyberattack that had taken down all of its community services.

The nature of the attack has not yet been confirmed. Roger Le Goff, the mayor, told local newspaper Ouest-France that the incident was “a big problem” and confirmed that all of the authority’s IT services had been rendered inoperable.

The only functioning system is the passport and national identity card service, which is compartmentalized from the township’s own IT network and administered centrally by the French government.

A message on the council’s website warns that “all services of the community … are impacted” including a local aquatic leisure center and the town’s CIAS (Community Social Action Center) a type of state-sponsored community center in France that provides support for vulnerable people.

Despite the impact, the authority stressed that the community center and the leisure center would remain open to the public as per their usual times, but with a degraded service.

The local area’s 10,000 residents have been asked to defer any non-urgent enquiries. Le Goff said the attack was detected on Friday and staff were “in the middle of analyzing the damage. We cut everything to isolate the problem and take stock,” he told Ouest-France.

The attack comes amid a spate of similar incidents affecting French organizations in recent weeks, including those affecting an online parcel service, another impacting an online news site, and one affecting CACG, an ecological engineering company.

France was among the 40 signatories to a recent pledge by the Counter Ransomware Initiative “to publicly denounce ransomware and those who perpetrate these devastating attacks” and refuse to pay in the case of an attack.

The pledge only commits government-controlled organizations to not pay in the case of an incident, although the signatories said they “strongly discourage anyone from paying a ransomware demand.”