US computing giant Microsoft said on Friday that it had identified Iranian state actors behind the recent cyberattack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Clint Watts, General Manager of MicrosoftThe Digital Threat Analysis Center of the hackerThose calling themselves “Holy Spirits” were Iranian cyber security firm Emennet Pasargad.
In early January, Holy Spirits announced that they had obtained the personal information of over 200,000 Charlie Hebdo subscribers, and published a sample of the data as evidence.
cyber attack It came after cartoons of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were published in a special edition to mark the anniversary of the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices, which killed 12 people.
Iran issued an official warning to France over “abusive and indecent” cartoons.
Emnet Pasargad was the employer of two Iranians, Mohammad Hossein Moussa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, who were indicted by the United States Department of Justice in November 2021.
He allegedly ran a cyber campaign “to intimidate and influence American voters, and otherwise undermine voter confidence and sow discord” during the 2020 US presidential election.
The department said Kazemi and Kashian allegedly obtained confidential voter information and sent threatening emails, provided false information to influence both Democratic and Republican voters, and attempted to hack state voting-related websites.
Microsoft said the Charlie Hebdo hackers, whose operation Microsoft dubbed “Neptunium”, offered the stolen customer database for sale online for 20 bitcoins, which is currently worth about $460,000 (roughly Rs. 3.80 crores).
“Whatever one might think of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial choices, the release of personally identifiable information about thousands of its subscribers poses a serious threat,” Microsoft said.