17-year-old hacker stole personal data of almost 20 million people

Tengrinews.kz – A seventeen-year-old teenager stole the personal data of 19.2 million clients of a French mobile operator, the police detained the perpetrator.
According to France Bleu, the Paris prosecutor's office reported that the detainee appeared before an investigating judge to be charged.
Telecoms operator Free had its data stolen from 19.2 million customers, including 5.11 million IBAN records, the watchdog said. That's the majority of the company's 22.8 million subscribers.

"On October 21, 2024, the Free database, containing information on 19.2 million customers from France, was put up for auction by a hacker on a cybercriminal forum," the prosecutor's office explained.

The investigation, commissioned by the cybercrime unit, established that the data was extracted between October 8 and 21.
According to a source close to the case, the teenager admitted to investigators that he had received 10 000 euros, which was half of the amount raised from the sale of the database.
In mid-November, a court ordered the Telegram messenger to reveal the identity of the hacker who used the platform to blackmail the management of the telecommunications company Iliad (Free's parent company), demanding payment of 10 million euros in cryptocurrency.
The suspect was arrested at home on January 13, 2025. According to the prosecutor's office, the teenager was already under judicial control after being arrested in June 2024 in another case related to the leak of customer data, including that of Sport 2000, as well as the hacking of Twitter accounts of media conglomerate Altice.
According to French media, the attacker was also arrested in December in other cases related to cyber attacks on the networks of two well-known French companies.