2023-09-16 17:45:32
The ax fell for the town of Betton, north of Rennes, during the night from Friday to Saturday. At 4:30 a.m., the cybercriminal group Medusa began publishing residents’ sensitive data, stolen during a large cyberattack launched two weeks earlier against the town hall.
The municipality had decided not to pay the $100,000 ransom demanded by the hackers, with a deadline set for Thursday, in accordance with instructions from the National Information Systems Security Agency (Anssi). “From the moment the meter expired, we told ourselves that it could happen at any moment,” breathes the mayor, Laurence Besserve.
It was the ethical hacker Clément Domingo, alias SaxX, who gave the alert, publicly, on of decompressed data: supporting documents, tax notices, family quotients, everything that is most critical for the city’s citizens! “. Betton town hall confirms that the theft does indeed concern this type of very sensitive file. Other publications could follow in the coming days, a habit for the “Medusa nebula”.
[ud83dudea8ud83dudea8CyberAlert | ud83cuddebud83cuddf7 Les données de la ville de Betton diffusées cette nuit à 4h30 !!!]
The ax fell last night. The cybercriminals of the group #Medusa released data from the city of #Betton.As a reminder, the Breton town (north of #Rennes) was the victim of… pic.twitter.com/QyrVBcKf4j
— S. A. X. X. (@_SaxX_) September 16, 2023
Additional problem, it chose to broadcast them on an almost general public channel, the encrypted messaging application Telegram and not on the “dark web”, a hidden part of the Internet accessible only to experienced people. “It’s terrible, because the data will be accessible to everyone very easily,” notes SaxX.
How many residents could be the victims of this gigantic theft? According to the Rennes ethical hacker, “given the quantity of information published, we can say that at least half of the people of Betton are impacted (out of a population of 12,000 inhabitants)”. For her part, Laurence Besserve mentions “several thousand people potentially affected”.
Risk of identity theft
The information that leaked is a real treasure for hackers and could be used to usurp the identity of the Bettonnais. “We may fear resale of information, such as identity documents, on certain cybercriminal forums. There is also a high risk of phishing: with the sending of very personalized emails or SMS messages asking for bank details,” SaxX lists.
To warn its citizens, the town hall of Betton plans to publish a declaration on Monday but above all to continue “the work of analyzing the files to, then, communicate individually or collectively with the agents, the elected officials, and especially the citizens, in office identified data”.
For the people of Betton and their loved ones, the advice is already good to follow, for the coming days and weeks and perhaps beyond… “You will have to be extremely suspicious in the event of strange phone calls, it is also better change all your passwords because the stolen data can give indications, and also talk about it around you, in order to alert as many people as possible,” says SaxX. “Particular vigilance is necessary regarding emails received and bank accounts. On identity theft, we work with specialists from Ansii and the gendarmerie to give the most precise advice,” adds Laurence Besserve.
The town hall of Betton, which filed a complaint on August 31, is also working to identify the vector of the attack. “It didn’t happen by sending an email or an attachment. Rather, it is a flaw that can exist in any system: they push a very large number of doors and if one opens, they rush in! We have to seal it and do everything so that it doesn’t start again,” assures Laurence Besserve.
“On the other hand, cybercriminals have no morals”
The mayor also specifies that she wants to work on the inventory of data and “target those that we can keep, according to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and delete them when we no longer need them. There is some updating work to be done. We will also share this unfortunate experience with other communities, so that it can be useful to them.”
On August 17, the town hall of Sartrouville, a town located in Île-de-France, had also been hit by a cyberattack. Pay slips and copies of identity documents of people working for the municipality were then leaked into the wild… The hospitals of Brest and Rennes were also recently paralyzed by computer attacks.
The ethical hacker SaxX regrets that it takes “this type of digital drama for us to realize that the protection of citizen data must be at the heart of the mandates of mayors because it is the entire life of their constituents that is exposed. However, local authorities and hospitals are left to their own devices because the necessary budgets are not allocated. And on the other hand, cybercriminals have no morals.”
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