Table of Contents

• Cyberattaque paralyse des services municipaux en Seine-Saint-Denis
  • We can still pacer, but not dissolve a PACS
  • Overnight, “we no longer had any email”
  • Out of the question to pay the ransom of four million euros
  • Bondy, Pantin and Villepinte previously reported IT assaults

During the night of December 5 to 6, a ransom attack [qui chiffre des données et réclame le paiement d’une importante rançon pour rétablir l’accès] Has struck the servers of the Intercommunal IT union (SII) in Bobigny, on which several municipalities and public organizations of the department depend.

Since then, the town halls of several cities in Seine-Saint-Denis fall back on the means at hand to ensure public service after a major computer attack: return to paper and pen, if not have the Internet. Administration most exposed to contaminated infrastructure, the town hall of Bobigny had to disconnect its access to the Internet to try to limit the spread. No longer able to light the computers, deprived of connection, its municipal employees found themselves cut off from the world.

We can still pacer, but not dissolve a PACS

However, “we have a duty of continuity of the public service”, explains Rached Zehou, delegated municipal councilor in Bobigny and president of the IBS, welcoming the “ingenuity” of municipal agents in this crisis. Are municipal mail addresses anymore accessible? Temporary Gmail boxes are created to be able to communicate with the public. Are the fixed posts almost all unusable? 4G boxes are installed in certain priority services to allow them to go on the Internet from laptops.

To obtain a birth or death certificate, the inhabitants must now go to person in the civil status and can no longer take the online process. Invoices for extracurricular activities cannot be sent, nor the sums collected. You can still pacer, but not dissolve a PACS.

Overnight, “we no longer had any email”

At La Courneuve, another city strongly affected but less heavily than Bobigny, “we are finding solutions everywhere in the form of Excel tables, paper archiving or use of another software,” said its Director General of Services Anthony Giinta. With Microsoft licenses, this popular commune of 45,000 inhabitants was able to open new mailboxes on another server for agents, having the most needed. But they no longer have their history of messages or their contact book.

Overnight, “we had no email. In parentheses it is not so unpleasant at first, but it poses a real concern in terms of the circulation of information, ”notes Anthony Giunta.

Out of the question to pay the ransom of four million euros

No return to normal is in sight for the moment. Obviously, obviously, to pay the ransom of four million euros requested by the pirates. Before being able to fully turn on the servers, the authorities must ensure that the threat has been circumscribed and that the systems do not risk a new attack immediately after.

In Blanc-Mesnil, damage is more circumscribed. The emails still work, but some professional software necessary for human resources management or town planning is inaccessible. Consequently, the approximately 1,300 municipal agents could not receive as usual their pay of December before Christmas, it will not be paid to them only a few days later.

Deprived of their automated software, human resources officials have returned to a certain craftsmanship. “It requires working in the old way. They take up the cards one by one, return the calculations from what was paid last month. It is more complicated to peel, ”says the office of mayor Jean-Philippe Ranquet (free!).

Bondy, Pantin and Villepinte previously reported IT assaults

In a recent report, the National Agency for Information Systems Systems (ANSII) noted an acceleration of attacks to the ransomware against local communities. In the space of a year alone, for the Seine-Saint-Denis alone, the cities of Bondy, Pantin and Villepinte previously reported a major computer assault affecting their operation.

“Local authorities have more and more important issues, we manage large amounts of data, both on city employees and on our inhabitants,” analyzes Rached Zehou, also a computer engineer specializing in the deployment of infrastructures. “The state transfers us more and more skills,” he says, “which requires more digitization, without the means to protect themselves on the other side.”