France Accuses Russian GRU of Cyber Espionage Blitz

France's foreign ministry has accused Russia's GRU military intelligence agency of conducting cyber attacks on French ministries and other entities since 2021. The accusations highlight France's first public attribution of state-sponsored attacks to Russia, based on its own intelligence. The GRU unit APT28 is implicated in destabilizing efforts dating back to 2015.

France has publicly accused the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, of carrying out cyber attacks against its ministries and several organizations since 2021, in a bold attempt to destabilize the nation.

This marks the first time that Paris has directly named the Russian state, using its own intelligence to support the charges against GRU's APT28 unit, based in Rostov-on-Don.

AFP reports the group's involvement dates back to 2015, including incidents such as the hack on station TV5 Monde and the leak of Emmanuel Macron's campaign emails in 2017.

(With inputs from agencies.)