A ransomware attack crippled the IT systems of France’s national museum network on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. The cybercrime unit of the French police has launched an investigation into the breach, which affected approximately 40 museums as cyberattacks targeted at the Paris Olympics have surged.
Among the impacted institutions is the Grand Palais, a prominent Paris museum and exhibition hall temporarily converted into a sports venue for the ongoing Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, hosting fencing and taekwondo competitions.
The attackers have reportedly encrypted some of the financial data and are threatening to release it unless an undisclosed ransom amount is paid. Despite the cyberattack, the prosecutor’s office confirmed that Olympic operations remain unaffected.
France Sees Cyberattacks Surge Amid Paris Olympics 2024
The incident is the latest in a string of cyberattacks targeting France during the Olympic Games. Outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal disclosed last week that authorities thwarted 68 cyberattacks in the Olympics’ opening days, with two aimed at Olympic facilities at Bercy and La Villette.
“All these 68 cyberattacks, including the two cyberattacks that targeted Olympic sites, were detected in time and foiled,” Attal said.
Beyond the digital realm, France’s critical infrastructure has also come under pressure. While coordinated arson attacks disrupted the country’s rail network on the opening ceremony day, a major sabotage operation targeted the fiber network a few days later. Both incidents are under investigation.
France Prepared for Olympic Cyberattacks
France’s cybersecurity agency, ANSSI, had anticipated a surge in cyber threats leading up to the Olympics and spent the past two years bolstering defenses through penetration testing and public awareness campaigns.
“Our goal isn’t to completely block attacks during the Olympics,” ANSSI Director Vincent Strubel had said in April. “It’s to significantly reduce their impact by enhancing security.”
Just ahead of the Games, French authorities launched a major operation to clean up computers infected by a cyber espionage program that has struck millions of users worldwide.
The scale of cyber threats facing the Olympics is immense. Cisco, which officially oversees the cybersecurity and network security of Olympic games, said the previous Olympics held in Tokyo saw 450 million cyberattacks, most of which were attempts to paralyze IT networks by overwhelming them. The head of technology for Paris 2024 said he anticipated “eight times more” cyberattacks than Japan had experienced.
