The small French town of Joigny in the Yonne department (Burgundy), home to fewer than 10,000 people, recorded nearly 269,000 attempts to breach its information systems in a single week. Mayor Nicolas Soret announced the news in a Facebook post on Friday.
According to Nicolas Soret, the town of Joigny and the Communauté de communes du Jovinien recorded 268,795 intrusion attempts against their systems over the past seven days. “Let’s call things by their name: this is a cyberattack carried out from 97,376 malicious addresses using 1,901 individual attackers,” the mayor wrote, describing the situation as the result of persistent automated attacks.
Most attacks originated from abroad
Nicolas Soret stated that the majority of the intrusion attempts were foreign in origin. The bulk of the servers used in the attacks—1,039—were located in Russia. A smaller number of servers were identified in Taiwan and Romania.
“The most persistent attacker alone made 109,232 attempts to break in,” the mayor of Joigny noted.
At the same time, Nicolas Soret assured that the detected attempts were identified and blocked by existing security systems, meaning there was no disruption to services. “None of our equipment was damaged. No personal data was stolen,” he stated, adding that the relevant authorities have already been notified.
The mayor noted that the town has spent recent years equipping and preparing its systems to counter such cyber threats.
“But we must realize that this has become an almost permanent situation,” Nicolas Soret emphasized.
Source: BFMTV
