AFP news agency suffers a cyberattack disrupting its content delivery systems. News coverage continues as experts investigate, with AFP urging partners to secure credentials and mitigate risks.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), one of the world’s leading news agencies, suffered a cyberattack that disrupted parts of its news delivery infrastructure. The attack, which took place on September 27, impacted AFP’s ability to distribute content to some of its clients. However, the agency assures that its core news reporting remains uninterrupted.
The Cyberattack and Immediate Response
The attack specifically targeted AFP’s IT systems, affecting some of the key delivery mechanisms that the agency uses to transmit content to its clients, including content delivery networks (CDNs) and file transfer services. Although the exact type of attack and the threat actors behind it remain unidentified, AFP said it has taken quick actions to restore full services.
According to AFP’s press release, French cybersecurity agency ANSSI (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information) was called in to aid in mitigating the impacts and securing the systems.
AFP’s technical teams have also identified that FTP credentials used by some clients to receive content might have been compromised during the incident. To address this, AFP has issued a cautionary alert to its partners, advising them to change their FTP passwords and ensure their reception systems are fully secure.
Global News Coverage Remains Unaffected
Despite the disruptions, AFP has made it clear that its editorial teams are operating without interruptions. The agency’s newsroom continues to report global events in multiple languages, including French, English, Arabic, and Spanish, ensuring the flow of news is not compromised. The incident specifically targets backend operations used for distribution rather than production, meaning AFP’s ability to gather and report news has not been impacted.
At this time, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, France has experienced a series of high-profile cyberattacks throughout 2024, targeting healthcare providers to government services. This latest attack on AFP adds to a growing list of concerns regarding the online safety of French critical infrastructure, particularly in sensitive sectors like media.
