A cyberattack targeted the site of the National Assembly on Monday, March 27. For several hours, the address assemblee-nationale.fr returned to a page indicating that “the site is currently under maintenance”. Claimed by pro-Russian hackers, it would be a denial of service attack (DDoS), that is to say that a large number of simultaneous connections caused a saturation of the website, reports Numerama.
“More than 100,000 daily attacks”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is France, and more broadly Europe, more threatened by cyberattacks from Russia and its allies? What is the state of cybersecurity in European countries, and what are the differences between European countries? How to assess this market, when in 2022, European start-ups raised more than 2.4 billion euros, according to the barometer of investment in cybersecurity, carried out by Tikehau Capital ? Why, if the European market is booming, is it still lagging behind the American and Chinese giants? Is cybersecurity education a generational issue? On the eve of the opening of International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille, we talk about cybersecurity in the news podcast “Minute Papillon! with Frans Imbert-Vier is CEO of UBCOM, a company specializing in cybersecurity strategy consulting, based in Switzerland.
That Europe “stop considering that we are in a world of care bears”
Since the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Frans Imbert-Vier underlines that the attacks against France and Europe have greatly multiplied. “It is considerable. Since February 23, 2022, we have had more than 100,000 daily attacks, in addition to what we had before, from eastern countries and countries supporting the Russian intervention in Ukraine. These are strategic attacks but they don’t work very well, because they rely on very old vulnerabilities, and overall these vulnerabilities are under control. »
“We are extremely exposed,” he adds. There are two wars in Ukraine, one on the ground, and “a real cyber war”. “The Russians have a much larger infrastructure of cyber fighters than European cyber fighters. (…) They are among the best with the Israelis. »
Regarding global investments in cybersecurity, the boss of UBCOM underlines in this exchange that “what the Europeans put on the table is derisory compared to the United States, China, or Russia. The Americans have an $800 billion five-year cyber defense plan. The Chinese, as they have about seven million cyber combatants, or about six million times more than what Europe has today (…) that would be 120 billion. Europe, in terms of investments in cybersecurity, is far behind the global reality. (…) The objective is for Europe, in its geopolitical and diplomatic doctrine, to stop considering that we are in a world of care bears, and that our allies are very nice. Our first ally, the United States, is also our first hacker. The Chinese are catching up with them (…) And we Europeans say “Nah, but it’s going to be fine””. To listen to the rest of this interview, it’s in the audio player above.
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