A black screen instead of Kylian Mbappé’s TGV goal against Juventus. Viewers had the bad experience on Tuesday evening of suffering a massive blackout, during the broadcast on Canal + of PSG’s first match in the Champions League. If this is not a first, several questions arise about this rather rare incident with unknown causes.
A long bug for subscribers
The encrypted channel’s streaming service, MyCanal, and its various applications on connected TV or on smartphones experienced a total disruption of the video stream. For some users, the interruption of service lasted from the first… to the 80th minute, ie almost the entirety of the meeting. The Downdetector site, which monitors computer problems online in real time, indicated that more than 20,000 outages had been reported on MyCanal at kick-off at 9 p.m.
Tuesday’s incident “probably impacted a limited number of customers”, perhaps in the order of magnitude “100,000 or 200,000”, according to the broadcaster.
“On behalf of Canal +, I apologize to customers who were unable to see the match,” Frank Cadoret, deputy general manager of the Canal + group, in charge of Canal + France, told AFP.
The group also apologized on Tuesday evening on social networks and on the air, but the fans did not take off. Ironically, the broadcast was able to continue smoothly on certain illegal streaming links, such as on Telegram, with images and sound, without the agreement of the rights holder, Canal +.
Not a first for a European match
When it was launched on the occasion of a Liverpool-PSG, the RMC Sport broadcasting service had experienced such a breakdown in September 2018. Its leaders had highlighted a massive influx of new subscribers who had overtaken them. More experienced in European competitions, the Canal + group also mentioned “too many simultaneous connections” and an “unheard of flow”.
The trail of a cyberattack
This is an official investigation lead, according to Canal +, due to a higher than expected number of connections or connection attempts to the streaming service. “We also do not rule out the possibility of malicious intent, because our servers are sized” for such an influx, according to Frank Cadoret. “At this stage, it is a bit premature to be able to give the exact cause, we are investigating,” he said, while Canal is broadcasting this Wednesday evening another French club match in the Champions League, Tottenham – OM .
“Last year, the biggest game was PSG – Real. We had made 2.5 million on average with a peak of 3 million “and the servers had no problems, argued Canal +. For Tuesday’s match, “as it was less (of viewers than for PSG-Real) and that our servers are sized for that, we were a little surprised, that’s why we are in the process of investigate “.
The configuration of the hack, if this lead is confirmed, points to a denial of service (DDoS) attack. “This attack can be launched from multiple points and targets all the components of the infrastructure, namely the network, servers and applications,” explains Xavier Duros, cybersecurity expert at Check Point Software.
“It can target network bandwidth resources, server resources, or web application resources,” he says. More than enough to knock out any live streaming service.