The city of Fouesnant sadly closes the too long series of ransomware attacks recorded in 2023

In Fouesnant, in Finistère, the year ended badly and it starts the same way. The town hall has indeed just been victim, at the end of December, of a ransomware attack, described as “large-scale”.

In addition to this city of about 10,000 inhabitants, the community of municipalities has also been affected by this computer attack. We do not know at the moment the cybercriminal franchise involved in this hacking.

Degraded services

“All community services are impacted and rendered inoperative, except for the passports and national identity cards service which operates normally because administered on a secure line by the state,” said the Fouesnant town hall on its website.

Same observation for the urban community, which reports degraded services. “As far as possible, users are asked to postpone requests,” says the community.

Back on the rise

If the year 2022 had ended with a slight decrease, the number of ransomware attacks has gone up again. In France, several communities have thus been victims of this kind of attack, such as Ozoir-la-Ferrière in Seine-et-Marne or Lille last spring.

The Paris prosecutor’s office, in an annual assessment communicated in mid-December, had indicated that it had opened 512 new criminal investigations following ransomware attacks in 2023, compared to 420 last year.

A bad trend also observed at the global level. In a recent podcast, executives from Chainalysis, this firm specialized in blockchain investigations, also noted the return of ransomware in 2023. It will be “important to understand what made it possible to reduce” this criminal activity last year, said Kimberly Grauer, the company’s director of research.