A "snapshot of the page as it appeared on Feb 22, 2017 14:09:52 GMT." (Google Cache)
Summary: A French politician finds himself red-faced after criticising the EPO, as his site gets flagged as malicious, gets blocked, and his blog post (speech) about the EPO vanishes
MR. Richard Yung has been in politics for a long time. He also has a pretty decent Web site with a good mobile version, alternating backgrounds etc. We wouldn't classify his site as something shoddy.
“The EPO would not hesitate to state this. I was informed on good authority that this was a hacking incident and apparently it has been confirmed by Senator Yung himself.”
--Anonymous"Dubious incident," one reader of ours called it, as "Senator Richard Yung's website got attacked and hacked [...] FYI, Last Friday SUEPO published the article "[Richard Yung] Question orale sur la dégradation du climat social au sein de l'OEB: réponse du Gouvernement - Richard Yung, senateur des francais de l'etranger" on their website under the column "February 2017 press articles" however I noticed when clicking on the link the following warning message was generated: “malicious website” , “website may harm your computer” and “This is a known dangerous website. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this site.”"
We noticed the same thing. I was aware of it and I actually wrote to him about it. I was unable to confirm whether he really got cracked or just simply restored from a recent backup that did not have his most recent posts (the latest post was missing at the time, yielding a "page not found" error).
We did some informal asking around, for no politician likes to publicly admit carelessness, defacement, sabotage etc. (unless it's Battistelli, in which case even mild tampering with a bicycle is gigantic news and a prelude to a national emergency at Eponia).
“I heard from a reliable source which requires not to be identified that Yung's site had been attacked with a technique that makes it referenced as a dangerous site by Google, hence the blockade that we all experienced (even from within the French Senat !”
--Anonymous intermediaryOne person told us that "other people confirmed this incident. I did some investigations on the same day and found out that Yung's website was available however the article including the video about the parliamentary question on the social climate of the European Patent Office had miraculously vanished. Pure coincidence? The EPO would not hesitate to state this. I was informed on good authority that this was a hacking incident and apparently it has been confirmed by Senator Yung himself."
We asked this reader to ask around for any more information about it because we needed an absolutely undeniable statement. Yung seems tight-lipped about it; he didn't respond to me.
We were waiting and waiting for more input and eventually we received this:
Yung apparently confirmed the hack to my contact, however I need to double check it. Would be nice to have a written statement about this. I'm on it and let you know asap ;)
[...]
Here is the reply from an intermediary:
"I heard from a reliable source which requires not to be identified that Yung's site had been attacked with a technique that makes it referenced as a dangerous site by Google, hence the blockade that we all experienced (even from within the French Senat !"