France media hacking: probe launched in wake of ‘IS attack’

The French foreign ministry has confirmed that members claiming to be supporters of the Islamic State group took responsibility for an attack on public television station TV5Monde, bringing into question whether other broadcasters could be targeted.

Individuals claiming to belong to IS alleged to have blacked out broadcasts from the organisation as well as posting material on its social media feeds to protest against French military action in Iraq.

The hackers had accused French President Francois Hollande of committing “an unforgivable mistake” by getting involved in “a war that serves no purpose”.

The French foreign interior and culture ministers subsequently visited the channel’s offices in Paris and pledged to identify those responsible.

“We are faced with determined terrorists, and we are determined to fight them,” said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, adding that cybersecurity measures would be reinforced.

Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin had called for a meeting with the heads of major broadcasters to assess weak spots and how best to deal with them. A judicial source said a preliminary investigation had begun.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the hack was an “unacceptable attack on the freedom of information and expression”, voicing “total solidarity with the editorial staff.”

L’attaque du réseau #TV5MONDE est une atteinte inacceptable à la liberté d’information et d’expression. Soutien total à la rédaction.

— Manuel Valls (@manuelvalls) April 9, 2015

Yves Bigot, director of TV5 Monde, said the assault caused its 11 channels to go temporarily off-air. Speaking to reporters, Mr Bigot said: “At 10pm all our eleven channels went down – you had a black screen – and all of our social channels were out of our hands, and messages supposedly from Isis were posted on them.”

A cyber security source told Channel 4 News that replacing programmes on a channel is a “complicated” procedure. The source said: “[The process] would involve understanding how all the broadcaster’s systems worked to the point where you could run them yourself, and that would take a long time.”

On the other hand, another broadcast security source said that there was “very little separation” between the employee’s systems (email, internet and so on) and the actual broadcast systems.

They [could] even potentially change the autocue scripts during a live broadcast. Source

The source added: “So if an attacker is able to get into an employee’s computer, they can delete footage and clips from the server, or even worse, insert their own footage and even potentially change the autocue scripts during a live broadcast.”

‘Shock and awe’

Experts from security company Blue Coat told Channel 4 News that it could have been a “phishing” attack, in which sensitive information is acquired by masquerading as a trustworthy source in an electronic communication.

Robert Arandjelovic said: “The main thing for the hackers is to get access to the right accounts. If you can trick the right person into giving you their account login details, someone who has access to key parts of the business, then you can effectively move from room to room inside the organisation’s computer systems.

They will now have the idea that they can create that level of shock and awe. Robert Arandjelovic

“It’s really hard to stop an attack like that.”

Asked if these individuals could actually take over broadcast transmissions he said: “Even if they don’t have the technical capability [to substitute programmes with their own versions], they will now have the idea that they can create that level of shock and awe, so that could be their next step.

“It’s something that’s been seen in science fiction movies, but it could soon be real.”

French news agency AFP reported the hackers posted documents on TV5Monde’s Facebook page purporting to be the identity cards of relatives of French soldiers involved in anti-IS operations, and threats against French troops.

The channel’s Facebook page was back up early on Thursday while the main website returned later in the day.

France is part of the international coalition carrying out strikes against Islamic State insurgents in Iraq. Its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle joined the operation in February.

More than 1,500 French nationals have left France to join the militants’ ranks in Iraq and Syria, where they represent almost half the number of European fighters present, according to a report released Wednesday by the French Senate.

Following the terrorist attack at the offices of magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January, historian Andrew Hussey reported that there has been a rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia in certain parts of France.

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Watch his report from Wednesday 8 April: