“We won’t be found or whatever, BFM are not the only ones on the list. » On March 23, members of the Epsilon group published this bravado message on their X account, signed by two pseudonyms: ChatNoir and Casquette. At the time, this curious group with youthful communication claimed responsibility for the flamboyant hacking of several accounts belonging to media, including BFM-TV, on which they published self-promoting messages.
This tweet taunting the authorities could have been a bad omen. A 16-year-old teenager was in fact arrested by investigators from the BL2C (brigade for the fight against cybercrime within the direction of the Paris judicial police) as part of the investigation into Epsilon, we learned The world, Wednesday June 5, with the Paris prosecutor’s office. During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, on its Telegram channel, the group published a long message announcing that ChatNoir had recently been arrested, and that the team was ceasing its activities. However, the prosecution did not specify whether the arrested teenager was indeed suspected of operating under this pseudonym.
The name Epsilon appears with fanfare at the end of 2023. In October, the company Shadow, a cloud specialist, admitted to having suffered data theft after the account of one of its employees was compromised. Two weeks after this attack was made official, the group offered its subscribers, on its Telegram channel, paid access to the stolen private information as well as other databases obtained.
Renting Malware
At the end of February, another major blow: members of Epsilon claimed responsibility for a hack that targeted LDLC, a French giant in the distribution of computer equipment. At the time, the company simply announced the opening of an internal investigation, but did not communicate further thereafter.
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Today, an investigation into the counts of “organized gang extortion”, “organized gang fraud”, “possession without legitimate reason of malicious software” and “attacks on an automated data processing system” is underway within of the specialized section J3 of the Paris public prosecutor’s office. Investigators are particularly interested in what was presented as the main activity of the suspected hackers: the sale of malware. Because Epsilon is above all the nickname of an “infostealer”, the name given to its viruses designed to steal personal identifiers and passwords.
In November 2023, the specialized company Sekoia was studying the case of this software rented, via Telegram, to other Internet users in exchange for a subscription costing a few dozen euros per month. The users of this virus particularly targeted video game players, by approaching them on social networks and promising them test versions of independent games. According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, “around 300 subscribers [à l’infostealer Epsilon] were counted ».
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