Three teenagers were indicted Thursday in the judicial investigation opened after threats and the hacking of digital workspaces (ENT) in early January which led to the evacuation of fifteen schools in France, learned Agence France -Presse (AFP), Thursday, February 2, from judicial and police sources.
According to a judicial source, these three teenagers are indicted for “death threats or threats of damage to property dangerous to people”, as well as for false denunciation. Two of them were also arrested for “fraudulent access and maintenance in an automated data processing system” implemented by the State as an organized gang, as well as for the fraudulent introduction of data into such a system. Finally, one of them was also indicted for refusing to submit the decryption convention of a means of cryptology, still according to the same source.
Aged 14, 15 and 17, they come from Gironde, Val-de-Marne and Bouches-du-Rhône, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday. According to the judicial source, they were placed under judicial supervision and were imposed an educational investigation measure, information of which The world was able to get confirmation.
This judicial investigation opened Thursday by the Paris prosecutor’s office follows a preliminary investigation entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Crime linked to Information and Communication Technologies (OCLCTIC).
Investigations still ongoing
Are other arrests planned? “The investigation continues”, simply replied to AFP a source familiar with the matter. Nicolas Guidoux, head of the sub-directorate for the fight against cybercrime of the judicial police (SDLC) which oversees the OCLCTIC, explained to AFP that the police officers were seized “forty facts, mostly hacks”.
“It is not insignificant in terms of public order”, he noted, with each time the police mobilized for the evacuation of the fifteen colleges and high schools which were concerned and the verification of the reality of these threats. The SDLC was intended to “end quickly” the dissemination of threatening messages, which risked “to renew”.
According to a source close to the investigation, the messages were first posted online on December 23, 2022 on video game forums, before being copied and broadcast on ENT, in particular at the beginning of January. The Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, had mentioned at the beginning of January “similar messages from one end of the country to the other, therefore hacked accounts”. These messages have “also circulated on WhatsApp loops”he specified.