Dear Partners and friends,
On Wednesday April 8th, at 8.50pm Paris time, TV5MONDE broadcast and technical centres in Paris have been attacked by cyber terrorists for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
This has resulted in the truncation of TV5MONDE’s global broadcasting services across all 11 TV Channels, available in over 250 million homes worldwide, from 10pm to 5am Paris time. A substitute schedule was then broadcasted on the global network.
From 10am onwards, the 11 channels’ specific programmes went back to normal, with the exception of the News and subtitling. By 5pm local time on April 9th, we were able to restore all News and subtitling.
If our Social media pages, and websites have been restored, our email addresses have not yet been reactivated, and will still do not know when things will be back to normal. I will be using this temporary email address to communicate. Should you wish to verify the integrity of this email, please feel free to contact me by phone either at the office or on my mobile number.
TV5MONDE teams and technical service providers supported by the national agency for the security of information systems, are working relentlessly to restore all the IT systems.
No prior message or threat had led us to expect such an attack.
According to experts and given the very high level of system security in place in addition to the regular checks carried out, this cyber-attack is likely to be the result of very well conceived plans and was organised with significant resources.
TV5MONDE is fully supported by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, as well as the French Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Culture and Communication. TV5MONDE group’s channels and states partners along with the International Organisation of La Francophonie are also strongly committed to help the Group’s production and worldwide distribution to be totally restored as soon as possible.
Thank you for your understanding and support.
Very Truly Yours
Alexandre MULLER
Managing Director
TV5MONDE Asia Pacific
Unit 704-706, 7F
Cyberport 1, 100 Cyberport Road,
Cyberport, Hong Kong
T: (+852) 2989 6090
F: (+852) 2989 6091