M6, one of France’s biggest TV channels, hit by ransomware

Unlike The Weather Channel earlier this year, M6 remained on the air.

The M6 Group, the largest France private multimedia group, was the victim of ransomware over the weekend.

The systems at the M6 Group, France’s largest private multimedia group, were infected with the ransomware over the weekend, fortunately, none of the company’s TV and radio channels interrupted the broadcasts.

According to the French newspaper L’Express, the ransomware attack only impacted landlines and e-mail.

“The company’s phone lines and e-mail are unusable, so employees have to use their mobile phones and text messages to communicate,” an internal source told the newspaper. “all the office and management tools are in disruption.” 

The company revealed the incident took place on Saturday.

Le Groupe M6 a été la cible samedi matin d’une attaque informatique malveillante. L’intervention rapide et efficace de nos experts en cybersécurité a permis de continuer à assurer la bonne diffusion des programmes sur l’ensemble de nos antennes TV et radio.

— Groupe M6 (@M6Groupe) October 13, 2019

The cybersecurity staff at the M6 Group was able to immediately mitigate the threat preventing any downtime its TV channels, radio stations, and film studios.

“The M6 ​​Group was the target of a malicious computer attack on Saturday morning, and the quick and efficient intervention of our cyber security experts has helped to ensure the continued security of the Internet. good broadcasting of the programs on all our TV and radio antennas “.  reads the message posted through the Twitter account of the group.

In April, another broadcast suffered a similar incident, a cyber attack hit the Weather Channel and forced it off the air for at least 90 minutes.

In April 2015, the TV5Monde was hit by a severe cyber attack that compromised broadcasting of transmissions across its medium. The attackers also hijacked the Channel TV5Monde website and social media accounts of the French broadcaster.

Yves Bigot, at the time the director-general of TV5Monde told the BBC that the cyber-attack came close to destroying the network of the French TV and investigation suggested Russia-linked APT28 group.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – M6 Group, ransomware)

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