Somebody disabled numerous France’s fiber optic cables earlier this week. The incident, which is being criminally investigated and has been known as an act of “vandalism” and “sabotage,” briefly disrupted the web in a number of French cities, together with Paris.

Several French web service suppliers declare to have had their cables focused, together with the businesses Netalis, SFR, and Free.

“Internet cables have been cut in the Ile-de-France region, which is affecting the landline and mobile network. We are in touch with operators who are working to restore service,” announced Cédric O, the nation’s Minister of digital affairs, early Wednesday morning.

That similar day, the French web supplier Free tweeted out photos of a number of the cables, which appear to be that they had been snapped in half with a bolt-cutter or another device. “Multiple malicious acts on infra fiber during the night and the morning,” the ISP tweeted, together with photos of the destroyed cables.

The obvious sabotage spurred a sequence of internet outages in cities throughout France, together with in Paris, Lyon, Reims, Bordeaux, and Grenoble, Reuters reports.

The Paris prosecutor’s workplace has now opened a legal investigation into the incidents and, considerably unusually, the nation’s home intelligence service, DGSI, is aiding, the Associated Press writes. It’s not completely clear how the cables have been lower or what sort of instruments have been used, and authorities haven’t stated whether or not there are any suspects within the case. In brief: we don’t know an entire lot about what occurred proper now.

That stated, different retailers have famous the considerably bizarre timing of this entire episode. France just finished a extremely contentious presidential election and the assaults on the nation’s web occurred just a few days after the political race wrapped up.

Attacks on vital infrastructure have turn out to be a widespread concern for governments in recent times.

In the U.S., authorities have regularly expressed concern that hackers and home terrorists want to goal the nation’s electrical and industrial programs. Just final yr, the FBI arrested a person who claimed he wished to explode an Amazon information heart in Virginia and thus “kill off about 70% of the internet.” In February, three males equally pled guilty to a right-wing plot that allegedly concerned the focusing on {of electrical} substations throughout the U.S.