Hackers threaten to leak 'top-secret' data after major cyberattack on French military
Cyber criminals claiming to have launched a devastating attack against French naval powerhouse Naval Group have released 30 gigabytes of classified material, whilst threatening to expose further critical military secrets.
The French military shipbuilder Naval Group, renowned for crafting submarines and frigates, has dismissed the hacking allegations, confirming it had "immediately launched technical investigations" after sensitive material appeared online.
The purported data breach allegedly contains classified intelligence regarding the NATO ally's nuclear submarine fleet.
State-owned Naval Group manufactures France's Suffren-class submarines - nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed attack vessels designed for anti-surface and anti-submarine operations, ground strikes, and specialist missions.
Boasting a heritage spanning 400 years back to Louis XIII's reign, Naval Group also constructed the French Navy's flagship and only operational aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, reports the Express.
Writing on a dark web platform, the hackers claimed possession of "top-secret classified" intelligence on "submarines and frigates", issuing the firm a 72-hour ultimatum to acknowledge the breach, whilst alleging their cache includes source code for submarine weapons systems.
Around 30GB of material was published by the digital criminals, though they insist they possess far more intelligence at their disposal - potentially one terabyte of documents.
Naval Group maintained there had been "no intrusion into our IT environments", stating it was the victim of a "reputational attack". As the largest shipbuilder in France, the company, which is nearly two-thirds owned by the French government, boasts a workforce of over 15,000 and generates revenues exceeding €4.4bn.
"Naval Group has noticed being the target of a reputational attack with the claim of a cyber-malice act. We immediately launched technical investigations," a spokesperson commented.
"All teams and resources are currently mobilised to analyse and verify the authenticity, origin and ownership of the data as quickly as possible.
"At this stage, no intrusion into our IT environments has been detected and there has been no impact on our activities."
Data breaches have become a global issue, with both commercial entities and governmental bodies succumbing to cyber attacks.
Just last week, Microsoft acknowledged that a July software update failed to completely rectify a couple of vulnerabilities, leaving SharePoint servers susceptible to hackers who could remotely execute code, an issue attributed to Chinese "threat actors".
In another incident, the US National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees America's nuclear weapons, was recently compromised but maintains that no sensitive information was accessed.
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