RENNES: A cyber atta­ck of “unprecedented intensity” against the Fre­nch government claimed by pro-Russian hackers this week failed to stop state operations running, a minister said on Friday.

The attack came just months before Paris hosts the Olympics Games.

The 48-hour effort, which started on Sunday, “hit 800 administrative centres at once”, but “at no moment were communications down... every civil servant was well-informed in real time and it did not destabilise the functioning of the state”, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini told reporters in Rennes, north-western France.

It had been “an attack of unprecedented scale in intensity, in time, and the number of places targeted”, he added during a visit to a government centre.

Guerini said he was “very cautious” about identifying the perpetrators of the attack, which was claimed by a pro-Russian group calling itself Anonymous Sudan.

“Several names have been mentioned: what stands out to me is Anonymous rather than Sudan,” Guerini said, saying those behind it were “almost certainly in allegiance to pro-Russian networks”.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2024