The Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in Le Journal du Dimanche that cyber attacks against the ministry were ‘doubling every year’ and that French security services blocked in 2016 “24000 external cyber attacks”
While a US intelligence report released on Friday accused Russia of being the source of hacker crime against the Democrats during the presidential election, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in an interview with JDD said that “it was conducted by a state with intolerable interference.”
So we asked if France is safe from similar attacks, the Minister replied clearly: “No, of course, we must not be naive”.
Harassment, tracking, spying
“Since I have been at my post and especially the last three years, the cyber threat has become greater including our own military tools”, he explains.
“IT assault attempts on my ministry are doubling every year” , said the defense minister, adding that “in 2016, 24,000 external cyber attacks were blocked by our security arrangements”.
He cites such “attempts to undermine the ministry picture, attacks for strategic purposes (harassment, tracking, spying) and even attempts to disrupt our UAV systems”.
On 12th December, Jean-Yves Le Drian has announced that in January 2017 a command of cyber operations, CYBERCOM, under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff of hosts, who by 2019 will have a Staff of 2600 “digital combatants”.
