The Interior Ministry of France experienced an email system breach and cyberattack, which allowed attackers to obtain some internal documents. Officials stated this week that the cyberattack, which occurred on December 11th and 12th, was the target of immediate action by the ministry and the national authorities. After this cyber breach, the affected ministry implemented new and more detailed cyberattack defense protocols on the folder that was used by the ministry employees.
More protective measures for ministry staff
These new and more detailed cyberattack defense protocols on the ministry staff employed additional protective measures. New and detailed cyberattack defense protocols in the folder used by the ministry employees were deployed.
New and more detailed cyber attack defense protocols have been deployed, which include some of the following updates to the employees of the ministry: access controls on internal documents have been modified, and new protective measures have been implemented by ministry staff.
Enhanced cyber intrusion monitoring, some of which is centralized, has been implemented. Multiple scenarios, including state-sponsored cyberattacks, hacktivism, cybercrime motivated by profit, and other foreign cybercrime sponsored by hostile nations, are being considered.
What is the role of The Interior Ministry?
The Interior Ministry’s role includes overseeing the police, coordinating immigration policies, and managing internal security concerns. This consultancy and email substructure, like any sensitive and critical component of a government administration, is of interest and operational objectives to highly sophisticated adversaries.
Unfortunate timing for a breach
Within the context of current and heightened cyber threats to French entities, the timing of the breach is unfortunate. Cybersecurity specialists precipitated a major data breach earlier this year directed at many entities, including the defense and research ministries associated with the defense, members of the local administration, and the Interior Ministry.
This information is freely available on the Internet, and the perpetrators are attributed to a group called APT28, otherwise known as Fancy Bear, connected to the Russian GRU military intelligence. Vulnerabilities associated with the Roundcube email client and server system were publicly reported, enabling the email targeting of authorized users to gather information on specific intelligence.
While officials have not confirmed a specific threat actor for this most recent breach, it is being analyzed considering APT28’s previous hits, and the ongoing cyber espionage directed at Western forensic agencies. With the Ministry’s management of critical law enforcement and immigration systems, it is an enticing target for adversaries.
The Interior Ministry has undertaken a host of standard incident response actions
The incident response actions include the adoption of threat hunting, enhanced email security with multi-factor authentication, and cyber forensic investigations aimed at identifying specific paths of potential network intrusions and lateral movements.
France’s National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) should be expected to lead the investigation in coordination with judicial authorities. Expected outputs should include digital forensic analysis, logging, breach analytics, and cybersecurity collaboration at the international level to determine the extent of the attack and its origins.
ANSSI’s reports on successful campaigns
From 2021, ANSSI has been reporting successful campaigns of intrusion by groups such as APT28, which exploit email clients, particularly Roundcube, to empty target mailboxes as prescribed by the emails and attachments their campaigns are designed to obtain and serve other intelligence collection purposes against policy makers, law enforcement, and diplomacy.
This compromise illuminates the trouble posed by threats to essential government services. Digital threats such as the attack in question are a “dying to get in” threat. Thus, obsolescence is a necessary condition for the attack in question, which has, and will continue to, lead to a loss of a “defensive” posture by many governments.
