French court officials at the receiving end of a massive spear-phishing attack

According to the French newspaper JDD, the French Attorney General Rémy Heitz and several magistrates and lawyers were the victims of a massive cyberattack. The threat actors used spear-phishing and Trojans to compromise their targets. The DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security) is investigating.

 Apart from the Attorney General, other victims included the investigating judge Aude Buresi, who is working on sensitive cases such as Libya / Nicolas Sarkozy and Société Générale / Kerviel and lawyers such as Jean-Marc Delas, who specializing in criminal law.

 A spear-phishing attack consists of targeting specific “high value” individuals (such as the Attorney General and Judge Aude Buresi) with a fraudulent email containing a Trojan to steal sensitive information (such as legal depositions in the Libya / Nicolas Sarkozy case). Once inside a network, threat actors can move laterally to spread the attack and mine more valuable information to use or sell.

It is not the first time that the Ministry of Justice came in the crosshairs of cybercrooks. Due to the sensitive work it does, the Ministry of Justice has been the target of cyberattacks for several years. For example, it was hacked in 2016 by a certain Dumpshell who got a 4-month prison sentence for obstructing an automated processing system and sending requests through a malicious program that left the site unavailable for almost 24 hours. In 2012, hackers also succeeded in breaking into the intranet of the Ministry of Justice and obtaining 1,500 unencrypted emails and passwords from agents.