PANews reported on August 7 that according to Protos, 40 museums in France were hacked last weekend, including a Paris Olympic venue. The hackers threatened to leak their financial data unless a cryptocurrency ransom was paid.
On August 3, the director of information systems at the Grand Palais Museum, which is hosting fencing and martial arts competitions during this year's Olympics, discovered that the financial data centralized systems of several French museums were being attacked by hackers. He then alerted the French cybersecurity agency, the French National Information System Security Agency (ANSSI). The hacker group explicitly asked these museums to pay the ransom within 48 hours, otherwise the stolen data would be made public. The French Anti-Cyber Crime Brigade (BL2C) has intervened in the investigation, focusing on "malicious attacks on automatic data processing systems, organized extortion and the potential involvement of criminal gangs," all of which may constitute serious crimes punishable by five years in prison.
In response to the public's concerns about the security of the Olympics, ANSSI responded quickly and made it clear that the hacker attack "will not have any impact on the operation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, especially the information systems directly related to the events." Earlier reports said that the Louvre Museum was affected by the hacker attack, but the museum denied this. In addition, in response to previous rumors that the Louvre Museum was also affected by the hacker attack, the museum has officially issued a statement to deny it, emphasizing that its information system is safe.
