France: ransomware investigations on the rise again

Quiet spell only lasted a year.

On December 19, 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office revealed to ZDNET.fr that its cyber division opened 512 criminal investigations following ransomware attacks in 2023. This represents a 20% increase compared to 2022 (420 new investigations), the first year a drop in this metric had been registered. There were 496 investigations in 2021, 263 in 2020, and 17 in 2019.

Therefore the 2022 drop seems to have simply been circumstantial. However, the total number of cybercrime investigations remains stable, at 612, compared to the same number in 2022, and 603 in 2021. Cyberattack investigations not involving ransomware were therefore nearly halved between 2022 and 2023 (from 192 to 100).

In France there is therefore clearly a move by cybercrime towards ransomware, with a return to numbers close to those of 2021.