Two young French computer hackers found themselves in the dock in Paris. Indicted for blackmailing thousands of people in exchange for money, they have been on trial in court since Monday, September 25.
The two concerned are now aged 25 and are appearing for acts which took place in 2019. Their trial, which has been held for 4 days at the 13e correctional room, is now coming to an end. They appeared before the judge for several fairly serious charges: extortion and attempt, organized gang money laundering, and fraudulent access and retention in an automated data processing system.
These two young hackers shook thousands of Internet users visiting pornographic sites by threatening them to disclose compromising images of themselves from their webcams.
Two friends behind a sophisticated scam
Young men are not the only ones to have engaged in blackmail on the Internet. Both met when they were younger, on sites dedicated to video games. Later, they became interested in hacking and developed malware called Varenyky between January and June 2019. Thanks to it, they made a large living by infiltrating the computers of their victims. In fact, they bought thousands of email addresses on the dark web, which cost a small fortune, and were thus able to send a threatening message to certain well-targeted Internet users: users of pornographic sites.
The message in question made the people concerned believe that the two hackers had compromising videos and images of them masturbating. To prevent their distribution, the victims had to pay them the sum of 500 euros, in Bitcoin. Initially, the hackers did not have access to these images, and they lied to scare their victims.
The monetization of fear
It turns out that the two friends then found a way to evolve their program to actually do “sextortion”, activate webcams remotely and film a large number of people without their knowledge. These were chosen automatically by the software from the moment they entered keywords that referred to pornography in their search engine.
This perfectly crafted scam would have earned them around 1.3 million euros. The two accused, however, deny this substantial sum and reduce it to “only” 150,000 euros. All accumulated cryptocurrency was converted into fiat currency at a currency exchange in Odessa, Ukraine. These sums would ensure them a substantial lifestyle, between trips to Eastern Europe, hotels, and purchases of cars and computer equipment.
For the moment, the Paris prosecutor’s office estimates the number of victims at more than 20,000. The investigation was opened in 2019 following 1,300 complaints from individuals. The two hackers had therefore been actively sought since and were identified a few months later by the Central Office for the Fight against Crime Linked to Information and Communication Technologies. The adventure therefore ends there for the two friends, who risk a lot after this dragnet.
Source : Is Republican
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