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What France reported about the APT31 campaign
France’s National Cybersecurity Agency, ANSSI, reported through CERT-FR that it was informed in January 2021 of a large campaign against French entities linked to the APT31 intrusion set. Its investigation examined the campaign’s complete infection chain. The report was published on 15 December 2021.
ANSSI identified compromised routers as part of the campaign’s anonymisation infrastructure. Its finding establishes how the router network was used, but does not establish that every router in it was located in France or identify a particular router vendor.
How the hacked routers and Pakdoor worked
Routers formed an intermediary mesh
ANSSI described “a set of compromised routers organised as a mesh network.” Rather than being the final target in every operation, these devices served as intermediaries: routing activity through multiple compromised routers made it harder to trace the operators’ origin and helped conceal their activity.
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Pakdoor orchestrated the network
ANSSI said the mesh was orchestrated by malware named Pakdoor. The report’s finding supports describing Pakdoor as the malware used to coordinate this router infrastructure; it does not make Pakdoor a consumer product or identify a specific router model. The available description does not establish the precise vulnerability or initial-access method used to compromise each device.
Did ANSSI say France was specifically targeted?
ANSSI said it could not identify sectoral or thematic targeting criteria for the intrusion set. It offered a “reasonable hypothesis” that APT31 acted opportunistically: first breaching French information systems, then using that access to pursue its goals. That is the agency’s assessment, not proof that every French sector was targeted equally or that the attackers had no particular objectives.
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What later U.S. allegations add—and what they do not prove
In an announcement dated 25 March 2024 and updated 6 February 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice said seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China had been charged over a hacking group operating in support of China’s Ministry of State Security’s Hubei State Security Department. The DOJ described more than 10,000 malicious emails and said the actors targeted political officials, dissidents and companies. It also said they used information gathered through tracking links to enable more direct and sophisticated targeted hacking, including compromises of recipients’ home routers and other electronic devices.
This provides later official context about APT31-linked router compromises and alleged state support; it should not be conflated with ANSSI’s separate account of the 2021 French campaign. The DOJ page states that an indictment contains allegations, and defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
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Why router security remains relevant
ANSSI’s Cyber Threat Overview 2024, published on 11 March 2025, identifies attackers associated with cybercrime and reputedly linked to China and Russia among the main systemic threats to French critical information systems and the national ecosystem. It also says that “over half of ANSSI’s cyberdefense operations” were brought about by exploitation of vulnerabilities on security edge devices. This is a figure about ANSSI cyberdefense operations involving those devices—not a claim that edge-device vulnerabilities caused more than half of all cyberattacks in France.
For organizations, the practical lesson is to treat internet-facing routers and other perimeter devices as security-critical infrastructure. The measures below are defensive steps; they are not a description of controls ANSSI said were used in this campaign.
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Reduce exposure and protect administration
- Inventory internet-facing routers and other security edge devices, including devices at smaller offices and remote sites.
- Disable remote administration from the public internet when it is not required. Where administration must be available remotely, restrict it to approved management networks or a secure access method and require strong authentication.
- Keep administration interfaces separate from ordinary user networks. Limit who can reach them and review access when staff roles change.
Patch promptly and confirm the result
- Track vendor security advisories for each device model and firmware version, and assign an owner to assess and apply relevant updates.
- Prioritize internet-accessible devices with known exploitable vulnerabilities. If a device cannot be patched, restrict its exposure or replace it according to the organization’s risk and vendor support status.
- After an update, verify the installed firmware version and check that remote-management settings remain restricted.
Monitor and contain suspicious activity
- Retain available router and management logs, and alert on unexpected administrator logins, configuration changes, unfamiliar outbound connections, or unexplained reboots.
- Segment device-management access from user traffic, and limit a router’s ability to reach internal systems that it does not need to manage.
- For organizations without staff able to review alerts and investigate them, consider whether managed monitoring is appropriate; evaluate providers on coverage, escalation, and response responsibilities rather than assuming a product alone will prevent compromise.
These controls reduce exposure and can make suspicious changes easier to detect, but they cannot establish whether a device has been compromised. If a router shows unexplained configuration changes or suspicious administration, preserve relevant logs, restrict its access where operationally safe, and follow the organization’s incident-response process, including vendor or specialist support as needed.
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