France Says Several Agencies Hit by 'Intense' Cyberattacks (bloomberg.com) 17
Several French government agencies were hit by "intense" cyberattacks beginning Sunday night. From a report: The attacks' impact on most services has been reduced and access to agencies' websites restored, the prime minister's office said in a statement Monday.
Oh Vladdie... (Score:5, Insightful)
Macron talks about sending French troops to fight for Ukraine, and next thing you know they're getting blasted.
Huh... what a coinkydink!
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If it is traced back to Vlad, it could make French citizens even more willing to stop his spread. Poison and sabotage start to backfire if you get carried away.
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Russia will be more sorry than Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin. lol
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The lesson of Vietnam versus Germany in WW2 is that blasting a population back to the middle-ages doesn't make much difference if they started there. Israel should also take heed.
Re:Oh Vladdie... (Score:4, Informative)
So, minor fun fact.
In Slavic languages, the root "Vlad-" relates to governmental rulership and power. In modern Russian, you have vlast' (power / authority), vladet' (to own / rule / possess / subjugate), vladyka (lord / ruler), etc. Similar in Ukrainian - for example, vlada (power / authority). While the "-mir" comes from the same Germanic root as the English "more", meaning "the great", modern folk etymologies relate it to "mir" (meaning either "peace" or "the world"). Orig. "The Great Ruler", modern closer to "Ruler of the Peace" or "Ruler of the World".
Of course he'll trace his name back to who he refers to as "Vladimir the Great", who solidified the rule of the Kyivan Rus and converted to Christianityi (to marry the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor). Ukrainians of course refer to him as *Volodymyr* the Great (myr, BTW, only meaning "peace" in Ukrainian, not "the world"). Historians commonly spell it more like Volodimer. As the Kyivan Rus was closely tied to Varangian vikings, the name has cognates in the Nordic world, such as the Icelandic "Valdimar" (Vald = power in Icelandic as well).
Note that in Russian, the nickname for Vladimir usually isn't "Vlad" (that's for Vladislav), but rather Vova or Volodya. The latter is a diminutive form, so it's sort of mocking to use when referring to a ruler. For example, there was a video from early in the war when an ethnic Russian family in eastern Ukraine filmed themselves in front of the flaming remains of their burning house after an attack, mockingly saying, "Good job, Volodya! Thank you for freeing us - this is everything we ever expected from you!" (gestures at the fire) "Now we can be warm this winter!" (leans over to her child) "Say thank you to Mr. Putin!" (Child) "Spasibo!"
"Good Job Volodya" has since become a meme, referring to backlash from the Russian invasion. For example, Sweden and Finland join NATO? "Good Job, Volodya!"
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This is more sinister than the time Russia blew up their own Nordstream pipeline to frame the CIA.
Re: Oh Vladdie... (Score:1)
If they said nothing or, .....if the EU and US did nothing about Ukraine? The same attacks in the same places on the same time table were likely a sure thing. Am I making sense?
Man, that's just Eiffel. (Score:1)
Sorry, couldn't resist a bad pun on a Modnay.
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Sorry, couldn't resist a bad pun on a Modnay.
Eau, de Gaulle!
How soon before (Score:2)
a cyberattack starts a war?
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If you mean trick/guide people with propaganda in cyberspace, using a "cyberattack" to take DoS trustworthy media, then I suppose that's already happened. People are more willing to go to war when they think they're being wronged/persecuted.
Re:How soon before (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's the same problem as the question, "The loss of which hair makes a man bald?"
Western governments have been easily exploited by less-than-unambiguous means of warfare by less scrupulous actors. But this situation is slowly changing. It has to be clear that hybrid warfare leads to harsh enough responses, from the perspective of the attacker, that it functions as deterrence - and "strategic ambiguity" (deliberately murky attribution of the attack, etc) doesn't work.
And thankfully, what attackers fear, they
"Intense Cyberattacks" (Score:3, Informative)
For me, an "intense cyberattack" need not be a DDoS attack..as that's so old at this point, filtering mechanisms are long established to block suck attacks eventually. This is why Cloudflare, Akamai etc have businesses.
A truly "intense" cyberattack would involve actually taking over these web sites, networks and backend infrastructure, leaving teams of thousands scrambling to take infected hosts down and bring back up services. That's not the case here, it's just a big DDoS attack. A handful of high end network engineers at backbone providers and DDoS mitigation companies are simply just on the hook to start filtering traffic.
Name and shame (Score:3)
While the incident may seem like just another DDoS attack, its media significance is linked to the growing adoption of a "name and shame" strategy by French authorities and other European countries. Their goal is to publicly denounce all forms of interference and attacks attributed to Russia in order to shape public opinion and garner support for efforts to counter aggression, including providing aid to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion.