“Ibp Xojbbp coxkzxfpbp…”: what does the coded message broadcast by the French army on X mean?

2024-03-19 12:30:44

Rest assured, the high ranks have not lost their minds. This Monday, the General Staff of the Armed Forces published on X (formerly Twitter) a message that was at first glance incomprehensible: “Ibp » A post which aroused questions from Internet users, but especially from cryptography enthusiasts.

Ibp Xojbbp coxkzxfpbp p’bkqoxfkbkq xr zljyxq zvybo. @ComcyberFR

— French Army – Military Operations (@EtatMajorFR) March 18, 2024

If you didn’t catch the message, don’t worry: it was coded according to a fairly basic principle. This is a shift cipher, one of the oldest ways to encode communication. Indeed, in the 1st century BC, it was already used by Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire.

To decipher the message published by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, simply shift each letter by three rows in alphabetical order. Thus, the initial “I” turns into “L”, the “b” becomes “e”, the “p” turns into “s”, and so on. The communication then appears in broad daylight: “The French armies are training in cyber combat. »

DEFNET exercise

This message from La Grande Muette is part of the DEFNET exercise, cybercombat training in which all the army corps are collaborating from March 18 to 29. During these two weeks, 15,000 cyber combatants, under the yoke of 15 headquarters and directorates, will have to face 30 simultaneous cyber attacks such as the theft of sensitive data or weapons hacking. It is from Rennes, where the command of the Ministry of the Interior in cyberspace is located, that the campaign is orchestrated.

The objective of a DEFNET exercise is to test “the processes, the methods put in place by all cyber combatants”, explains Commander Pierrick on the website of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. “At the end of each day, we take stock of the situation, a review of what happened. And at the end of the exercise, we do what we call in our jargon a global retex (feedback). Which allows us to improve cyber operational preparation for the Armed Forces and train our cyber combatants,” he explains.

France is regularly the target of cyberattacks, and attacks could increase as the Paris Olympics approach. Recently, at the beginning of March, several state services were affected by an offensive by the pro-Russian hacker group Anonymous Sudan. Three days later, France Travail was also the victim of a hack that potentially compromised the digital data of 43 million people.