General Sylvain Noyau promised, Friday January 28 on franceinfo, “upcoming operations” in the fight against the trafficking of fake health passes. While 400 investigations have been opened since August and a network of 62,000 false passes was dismantled on Tuesday and Wednesday, the director of the Central Office for the fight against damage to the environment and health public (Oclaesp) explained that this traffic consisted of “from ephemeral networks” who will be able to convert to another delinquency thereafter.
franceinfo: What kind of fake pass traffic are you dealing with?
Sylvain Core: There are 400 investigations that have been opened since August on fake health passes. Many of these are still ongoing, with operations to come. We are on very different offenses from each other. We can have very simple operating methods, with people using the false pass of a relative or someone who, rather than checking the validity of your pass at the entrance to a restaurant, photographs it and then uses or makes it available on social networks. For the most elaborate devices, like the one that was dismantled this week, it was hackers with very specialized skills who managed to get their hands on the connection data of health professionals. They were able to access Ameli accounts to generate health passes and therefore generate fake ones.
How do you work to identify and trace the channels?
This is the whole demonstration of the judicial inquiry. It can start in several ways. For the network dismantled this week, it was a doctor who realized that he had been the victim of usurpation and filed a complaint. In this case, our job is to materialize the facts and trace the traces with authors who, for their part, seek to anonymize their process. They exploited vulnerabilities at some point in the device. Our job is also to identify security vulnerabilities and fill them with our partners who are justice, the Ministry of Health, and the National Health Insurance Fund (Cnam).
Do you work more and more in the computer field?
Completely. We can see the place that cybercrime is taking today. This is also why the director general of the gendarmerie created the command of the gendarmerie in cyberspace last summer. We approach these files as during a classic investigation, but also with a numerical and then financial investigation since it is the lure of profit that motivates the authors. Imagine: 62,000 passes that sell for between 200 and 300 euros each…
Like narcotics, has it become a market with its organized sector?
Yes, we have networks of hackers, who rely on counterfeiters who will generate false passes, who themselves rely on touts who will seek, particularly on social networks, beneficiaries who seek to obtain fake health passes. The difference with a drug trafficking network which is generally always the same, is that we are on ephemeral networks which will be set up one day for fake health passes, but tomorrow it will be payment fraud. or another structure with fake papers.