Cyberattack on AFP, global news agency: ‘Relevant authorities in France…’

Agence France-Presse (AFP), the global news agency, said on Saturday that it detected an attack on its IT systems on Friday.
In a statement on its website, AFP said that the attack on its IT systems affected part of its delivery service to clients.
“It is not yet known who carried out this attack or why,” said the news agency.
Further stating that AFP’s technical teams are working on the incident with the support of the French National Agency for IT Systems Security (ANSSI), AFP added, “The relevant authorities in France have been notified.”
“We are currently working to analyse and deal with this incident.”
However, the agency assured that the AFP’s newsroom and all its services continue to provide news coverage across the world.
In August, French authorities said that more than 140 cyberattacks were reported during the Paris Olympics, but none of them disrupted the competitions.
Between July 26 and August 11, government cyber security agency Anssi recorded 119 reports corresponding to low-impact “security events” and 22 incidents in which “a malicious actor” successfully targeted a victim’s information system.
The attacks mainly targeted government entities as well as sports, transport and telecoms infrastructure, the agency said.
According to Anssi, a third of those were downtime incidents, half of which were due to denial-of-service attacks designed to overwhelm servers.
Earlier this month, quoting an airport official, AP reported that hackers demanded $6 million in bitcoin from the operator of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for documents they stole during a cyberattack last month and posted on the dark web this week.
However, the Port of Seattle, which owns and runs the airport, decided not to pay.
The airport previously linked the attack to a ransomware gang called Rhysida, and now the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation.
Whereas on September 13, Russian hacker groups briefly disrupted Taiwanese financial platforms including the stock exchange and lender Mega Financial Holding Co.’s website.