Security News > 2023 > February > Iran crew stole Charlie Hebdo database, says Microsoft

Microsoft believes the gang who boasted it had stolen and leaked more than 200,000 Charlie Hebdo subscribers' personal information is none other than a Tehran-backed gang.

On January 4, a previously unknown cyber-crime group that called itself Holy Souls claimed to have stolen a Charlie Hebdo database containing 230,000 customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and financial information, and offered it for sale for about $340,000.

Now, under the guise of Holy Souls, the Iranian government-backed group was up to their same old TTPs. After claiming to steal the Charlie Hebdo database, the miscreants then released a sample of the data on YouTube, which Le Monde later verified as legitimate.

The miscreants used "Dozens" of French-language sockpuppet accounts to criticize Charlie Hebdo and the Khamenei cartoons on Twitter.

"Crucially, before there had been any substantial reporting on the purported cyberattack, these accounts posted identical screenshots of a defaced website that included the French-language message: 'Charlie Hebdo a été piraté'," Watts said.

Within a few hours of their tweets, Microsoft documented at least two others, one purporting to be a French tech exec and the other a Charlie Hebdo editor, that began posting screenshots of the data dump.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/02/04/microsoft_iran_charlie_hebdo_hack/