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Microsoft mentioned on Friday that an Iranian nation-state group already sanctioned by the US authorities was behind an assault final month that focused the satirical French journal Charlie Hebdo and 1000’s of its readers.

The assault got here to gentle on January 4, when a beforehand unknown group calling itself Holy Souls took to the Web to say it had obtained a Charlie Hebdo database that contained private info for 230,000 of its clients. The submit mentioned the database was accessible on the market on the worth of 20 BTC, or roughly $340,000 on the time. The group additionally launched a pattern of the info that included the total names, phone numbers, and residential and electronic mail addresses of people that had subscribed to, or bought merchandise from, the publication. French media confirmed the veracity of the leaked knowledge.

The discharge of the pattern put the purchasers vulnerable to on-line concentrating on or bodily violence by extremist teams, which have retaliated in opposition to Charlie Hebdo in recent times for its satirical remedy of issues pertaining to the Muslim faith and Islamic nations reminiscent of Iran. The retaliation included the 2015 taking pictures by two French Muslim terrorists and brothers at Charlie Hebdo workplaces that killed 12 and injured 11 others. To additional gin up consideration to the breached knowledge, a flurry of pretend personas—one falsely claiming to be a Charlie Hebdo editor—took to social media to debate and publicize the leak.