22-year-old arrested after dozens of sensitive French Interior Ministry files stolen in cyber attack
Hacker / Photo: Peerapong Boriboon / Dreamstime.com
A 22-year-old man has been arrested following an earlier cyber attack on the email servers of the French Interior Ministry, which affected more than 20 files, including some containing data from criminal records, Reuters notes.
The French prosecutor's office announced on Wednesday that the detained person was already on police records after being convicted of similar crimes this year. The suspect was born in 2003, but prosecutors have not released his identity.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez had said earlier on Wednesday that last week's attack was more serious than initially estimated.
On December 12, Nunez said there was no indication that the servers had been significantly compromised.
“It is a serious thing. A few days ago we said that we did not know whether there were breaches or not. Now we know that there were compromises, but we do not know their extent,” he said on Wednesday on Franceinfo radio station.
The compromised files included criminal records. For now, there are no clues regarding the perpetrators of the attack.
Nunez stated that both a judicial investigation and an administrative investigation were launched, and the National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) was informed.
“I can tell you that, until this morning, millions of data have not been extracted (…), but I remain very cautious about the level of compromise,” added the minister.
Last week, “a person or a group of people” penetrated “for several days” into the IT systems of the Ministry of the Interior using electronic messaging and going through professional e-mail addresses to recover the access codes, AFP notes, according to News.ro.
“A person was able to access files using passwords that should not have been changed by messaging, clearly”, detailed the minister, lamenting the “recklessness” of the staff.
A few days ago, a group of hackers claimed – without providing evidence – this attack and assured that they accessed the data of more than 16 million people, coming from the police files.
Photo: Peerapong Boriboon / Dreamstime.com
