During the spate of populist uprisings across the Arab world, we’ve heard a lot about the impact that the internet can have on politics — so important for communication that it was shut down, first by Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and more recently by Muammar Gadaffi in Libya. But it’s worth remembering that it’s not just dictators who find that the internet is a weak spot.
Take today’s example: it’s been revealed that the French Ministry of Finance — based in the Parisian suburb of Bercy — has been targeted by unidentified hackers over the past two months, who have been trying to steal information about the G20 and the country’s economic situation. The affair, which was first reported by Paris Match magazine, saw at least 150 government computers infiltrated.
French experts have been trying to find out more about the strikes for some time — with particular responsibility falling upon ANSSI, the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems, and its chief, Patrick Pelloux.
“For two months, between 20 and 30 people from ANSSI have been working day and night on this case,” Pelloux told Paris Match. “Hackers have tried to attack other ministries. There may be things that we have not seen, but to my knowledge only Bercy has been affected.”
Where the attacks came from isn’t clear — initial information appears to indicate Chinese origins, but experts admit that evidence means very little right now — but it doesn’t seem to have been a particularly complex strike.
In essence, certain government workers received emails with attachments that contained a Trojan.
When they opened the attachment, their computers were infected, which allowed the hackers to take over their computers. It’s pretty crude by most accounts, and certainly a league or two down from Stuxnet, the power grid worm that targeted the Iranian nuclear program.
In fact, it looks like it’s been a bad few days for internet security in general. South Korea reported a series of strikes against websites, and a string of denial of service attacks hit popular blogging platform WordPress (see disclosure).
It’s hard to attach meaning to so many possibly unrelated event. But at a time when we often focus on the internet’s ability to help overturn the existing order — whether it’s revolutionizing businesses, organizing anti-government protests or the radical political transparency of Wikileaks — it’s a sobering reminder that the net’s power can cut both ways.
Photograph used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Guillaume Paumier
Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.
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