France has received an official warning from its country’s Watchdog ANSSI which says that the groups that hacked the US Democratic National Committee might also target its next year’s presidential elections.
France Watchdog Chief, Guillaume Poupard has assured that the security teams are already monitoring and blocking attacks against French interests. He, however, said that some foreign nations are leaving no stone unturned to influence the elections.
ANSSI says that it is well prepared in advance for any kind of sabotage threats. The watchdog has also a well-trained security expert’s team in place, if in case, any state-funded actor tries to intercept the elections event of next year.
Already a briefing was made to all country’s Presidential Candidates on October 27th this year, drawing lessons from the US experience. The authorities from the Watchdog has also provided training material on what to do and what not to do when they are accessing web services for any kind of political correspondence.
The main aim of the cyber attack on a country’s election will be to politically destabilize a nation by launching attacks which could influence public opinion with manipulative information.
The US experienced the same before its 2016 elections polls held on November 8th, 2016. Hillary Clinton and her political party were targeted in the same genre which eventually led to the surprise victory of Donald Trump.
In a media briefing given to Bloomberg, ANSSI said that it is not an intelligence-gathering unit and so will not monitor or install sniffers to trace cyber attacks on political parties on an individual note.
To be well prepared on this note the political parties should reach out to cyber security firms, vetted by the state, to formulate directives for securing their networks. This includes filtering email traffic, identifying users, encrypting communications and keeping tools related to work and private on a separate note.
