French elections: political cyber attacks and Internet traffic shifts

Cloudflare reports sustained DDoS activity against multiple French political party websites around the June 30 and July 7, 2024 election dates, with peak attacks reaching up to 151,000 rps and hundreds of millions of requests in a day; while mitigated, such volumes can overwhelm unprotected sites. The study also shows a 16% national Internet traffic dip at 20:00 local time when TV stations announced initial results, regional variations in traffic reduction, elevated mobile traffic shares (up to 58%), and DNS spikes to news and TV domains, illustrating how election-night behavior and media consumption shape online traffic patterns.