When the city of Marseille almost fell in the face of hackers

The events take place on the night of March 13-14.

The information systems of the Marseille administration is the victim of a large-scale cyberattack. The municipality is close to the blackout. Panic is starting to set in. The hackers, who had meticulously prepared their coup, managed to take the city's computer system hostage. To release him, they demand a ransom.

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A classic coup of the ransomware attack. At the time it was possible to read on social networks whether it was Twitter, Instagram or Facebook these kinds of comments:

"Even in cyber space, and after real space, this city manages the feat of demonstrating all its casualness, incapacity, neglect and amateurism. This poor town is in the abyss. commented by juliastephan;

"Bug 2 days before the municipal elections, what chance!!! And in addition with servers located in Ireland then there is the supreme blow …. Not even country, nor even law…. »

Reviewed by Marselle;

"Unsophisticated attack, major security flaws, flapie architecture and completely vulnerable. Here again the same devastating casualness of the city's services (France's second largest city… wow!!!). commented by Souslevercors.

These comments in a few lines could highlight the current state of mind. Everyone was going with their own idea. Some commentators, being from the security sector, have had to criticize the behavior of the specialists of the Marseille administration, including one in particular the name Korbain on Twitter. "Hello, 200 computer scientists to get to this point!!!!! Former IT manager, I find it difficult to understand the neglect of the IT team of the city of Marseille. Indeed, there should be a backup plan that allows a restart at full time at D-1/J-2. How little network team put backups on the same network as production servers. If I had had this kind of problem when I was active, I would have been fired. But in the city of Marseille, I think they will get a bonus for putting the computer system back in place after a month and a half of shutdown… Well also when we hire poster stickers (friends of friends in Gaudin) as computer scientists we have only what we deserve. ». This kind of reaction is easy to understand… Indeed, several negligences have been observed in the management of the system of the Marseille administration. Even if today the worst is over, these kinds of problems can still arise. Especially if the organization doesn't improve. It is for this reason that the French gendarme of cybersecurity, the National Agency for Security of Information Systems (Anssi) keeps warning a prodigal of recommendations at every turn.