Russian hackers bring visa application platform to its knees

According to exclusive information from our colleagues at Numerama, the French visa application platform has been offline since June 29, 2023 following a cyberattack launched by Russian hackers. This is not the first time that French institutions have been targeted by Kremlin-affiliated groups.

Russian pirates have once again attacked a French institution. As revealed by our colleagues from the Numerama site, the visa application platform has been offline since Thursday, June 29, 2023.

According to information shared by the media, a group of Russian hackers launched on the night of the 28th to the 29th a DDOS attack or as it is now called in France, attacks by collectives by saturation of service.

The DDOS attack, the favorite weapon of Russian hackers

For neophytes, this technique consists of multiply connection requests on a site. The idea being to overwhelm the servers with a large number of requests until they cause an outright crash. Typically, this type of attack puts the targeted platforms out of service for a few hours at most.

DDOS attacks mainly have a symbolic significance, in the sense that their effects can be seen immediately. But in reality, the consequences on an infrastructure/institution/company are much less significant than those caused by ransomware, for example.

The visa application site still KO

At the time of writing these lines, the visa application site is still inaccessible. On the home page, we can see that the site is under maintenance. On Telegram, Russian hacker group UberSec proudly claimed responsibility for the attack. Worse still, hacktivists promise more attacks are coming.

The Kremlin has taken to supporting these pirate collectives, which regularly attack designated enemies of Moscow. DDOS attacks remain the method most used by these groups. As said above, these low-cost campaigns have visible (if not serious) and remain a weapon of choice in Russia’s cyberwar against Ukraine’s allies.

In March 2023, a group of Russian hackers knocked out the National Assembly website thanks to a DDOS attack. A few days earlier, the site of the Marie de Lille was in turn the prey of a cyberattack, putting all the servers offline.