What happened to the "Christmas without Amazon" petition?
Politicians have launched a petition to encourage French people to shop locally for their Christmas purchases. The petition, called "Noël sans Amazon" (Christmas without Amazon), has been the target of a "large-scalecyberattack," according to its founders.
The latter took place on the night of Tuesday, November 17, "via 218 servers belonging to the same person, whose identity has been traced," the deputies said in their press release.
"This person is the head of several IT companies specializing in e-reputation, marketplaces, lobbying, and e-marketing, and has been certified by Amazon Web Services [...] It is too early to know whether Amazon is directly responsible for this malicious act."
How can you tell if you are being attacked?
"The petition was launched on Tuesday at midday. The number of signatures was steadily increasing, reaching just over 8,000 by the end of the day. Shortly after 11 p.m., a colleague told me that there were more than 25,000 signatures. We immediately realized what was happening," said Matthieu Orphelin, co-founder of the petition, to Libération.
What did the hacker do?
The goal was to add tens of thousands of signatures to this petition in order to overload the server and make its page inaccessible. This action resulted in preventing the signatures from being counted, thus preventing the petition from existing.
Members of Parliament are considering filing a complaint for obstruction of the right to petition.
Many public figures, such as members of Congress and mayors, have joined this petition.
We sign it, the website on which the petition was created, andOctopuce, its host, will also take legal action.
