A few days ago, hackers claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against the Department of Justice. Hacker group Lockbit 2.0, behind the incident, has been threatening the ministry for more than a week to publish the stolen data if the ransom is not paid. The data was published a few hours ago and according to the experts, these point rather to a Caen law firm.
Has the Ministry of Justice really been affected?
Observers and cybersecurity specialists who have had access to the data disseminated by the Lockbit 2.0 hackers are skeptical. The hackers claim to have stolen these files from the Department of Justice. Still, experts have noticed several inconsistencies. The attack had not been officially confirmed by the authorities. Contacted by Century Digitalthe ministry had simply indicated that it had “acknowledged the alert”. On the night of February 1 to 2, 2022, the cybercriminal group finally carried out its threats.
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The documents consulted by Cyberwar likely suggest that it was not the Ministry of Justice that was affected. Experts think it would actually be a Caen law firm. Initially, Lockbit 2.0 hackers planned to release the stolen data on February 10. hard to understand why the broadcast was brought forward several days. Several observers, such as twittos Defend Intelligenceartificial intelligence engineer (@DFintelligence), or Oreo (@OreoCSGO) wonder about the nature of this leak.
Let’s get things straight. This leak concerns a law firm in Caen. It is not my duty to reveal his identity at the risk of being confused with concealment
I failed to establish a connection with justice fr. This leak seems to have affected a computer in the office. pic.twitter.com/xUZv9WdxAF
—Defend Intelligence (@DFintelligence) February 2, 2022
The personal data of the clients of a Caen law firm have been disclosed
The AI engineer is adamant. According to him “this leak concerns a Caen law firm”. He specifies that he does not wish to reveal his identity, “at the risk of being confused with concealment”. For Twitter, there is no connection with the Ministry of Justice. This leak would therefore have affected a computer from the Caen cabinet and not from the institution in Place Vendôme in Paris. On the other hand, he specifies that “this leak contains thousands of files as expected”. The files are of all kinds, excel, pdf, audio file, private messages, photos. “Highly confidential information”.
Just because the Justice Department wasn’t hit doesn’t mean this attack isn’t serious. According to observers, “This leak contains confidential legal, personal and medical data from many customers: court decision, identity document, employment contract, sick leave, etc. ». By the way, all company passwords have also been released, even those of bank accounts. For Defend Intelligence, “there has clearly been negligence on computer security”.
Contacted, the law firm does not wish to comment on the incident for the moment. The victims of the cyberattack would already be in contact with the competent authorities to find solutions to this data leak. Lockbit 2.0 is a group accustomed to this kind of trickery. This is not the first time that hackers have exaggerated the nature of the stolen data. In January, they had already claimed a cyberattack against Thales. Like here, the data disseminated was of “low value”.