Suspected of being at 18 years old one of the hackers behind the resounding hack of the tax authorities, an alleged member of the Zerobytes hacker group which stole the data of 678,000 taxpayers was indicted and placed in pre-trial detention in Paris.
A second suspect, aged under 16, was also arrested and placed in police custody, but then released, the prosecution said, after information from Franceinfo and Le Monde. Investigators will now exploit his computer equipment.
Questioned by AFP, the latter’s lawyer, Mr.e Reda Ghilaci did not wish to comment.
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The tax hack, which occurred at the end of June and the end of July, led to the theft of data of at least 678,000 individuals and professionals, according to the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP). It was only brought to the attention of the general public in mid-August, when a group of hackers called Zerobytes, presenting themselves as a duo, claimed it.
The government took up the matter, Sébastien Lecornu requesting an audit from the national information systems security agency (Anssi) and the Minister of Public Accounts David Amiel apologizing to the affected taxpayers.
“Resurgence of minors committing offenses”
Without delay, justice had discreetly opened an investigation, we learned from the prosecution on Friday. From the “reception of the first complaints”, on July 31, and therefore before the attack was claimed, the sensitive matter had been entrusted to the Anti-Cybercrime Office (Ofac).
The 18-year-old man, who lives in the Paris region, was arrested on August 18 and indicted two days later. He is an experienced hacker, known to the police. And justice: he had already been indicted twice, in two cases of computer attacks committed in 2023 and 2024, while he was still a minor. He has been under judicial supervision ever since.
In the tax file, he faces a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 300,000 euros for a series of cyber offenses, as well as for criminal conspiracy.
Asked, his lawyers, Mare Camille Lucotte and Sofia Massou did not wish to speak.
Generally speaking, the prosecutor’s office responsible for the fight against cybercrime has noted in recent months “an increase in minors committing offenses” in this area, explained Johanna Brousse, the magistrate who heads it, calling for “deconstructing the myth of the hacker hero”, in an interview with AFP on Monday.
A group motivated by “money, I guess”
Around Zerobytes, “the investigations are now continuing under the direction of an investigating judge to identify and arrest the other people involved,” specifies the prosecution.
The forum on which the group claimed responsibility for its attacks was operational Friday afternoon. His X account, on which he taunted the authorities, was however closed, AFP noted.
Among the victims of the pirates, the National Education services (Academy of Créteil, Agency for French Education Abroad), France Travail, the French Handball Federation, the distributor Intermarché and the telecoms group SFR, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
In mid-August, Zerobytes told AFP that it had sold the stolen data to the tax authorities for a sum amounting to “thousands of euros”, an unverifiable assertion. Asked about their objectives, the duo assured that they did not have “specific motivations”, except “money, I imagine”.
Among the stolen personal tax information are the first and last names, the reference tax income, the family quotient and the withholding tax rate. Data concerning professionals is “less sensitive”, according to the DGFiP.
The precision of these files fuels fears of targeted scams. In the cybercriminal economy, the hacker who breaks into a system is generally not the one who will then exploit the information: the stolen databases are often resold to fraud specialists.
The tax authorities have announced that they will contact the users concerned individually to warn them against possible targeted scams.
With AFP
