French Websites Knocked Offline in Cyber-Attack on Cedexis

(Bloomberg) -- The websites of several major French media outlets were knocked offline Wednesday during a cyber-attack against Cedexis, a Paris-based provider of network and cloud technology to corporate customers.

The newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro were among those that reported their sites were briefly shut down by the attack, which occurred during the afternoon in Paris.

Three of five networks that Cedexis operates to manage web traffic for clients were partly disabled by a “significant DDOS,” or distributed denial-of-service attack, Julien Coulon, the company’s co-founder, said in an interview. In a DDOS attack, a network is overwhelmed by a barrage of data, typically deliberately. Coulon said the company hadn’t yet identified the source of the attack. He said services to clients were fully restored by early evening.

Cedexis, which was founded in France in 2009 and has U.S. headquarters in Portland, lists on its website customers including major French companies such as Airbus SE, Air France-KLM, and Total SA, as well as U.S. companies such as Microsoft Corp. and publicly supported broadcaster PBS. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, also is a Cedexis customer.

To contact the reporter on this story: Carol Matlack in Paris at cmatlack@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Geraldine Amiel at gamiel@bloomberg.net, Nate Lanxon, Andrew Pollack