These ex-employees of the manager of the electricity transport network had cut the piloting of fourteen high-voltage stations in 2022. At the end of a survey conducted by internal security, they appeared on Tuesday before the criminal court from Paris.
by Aline Leclerc
Cutting the computer system which makes it possible to control fourteen high-voltage electrical posts remotely is an act of harmless and banal protest as part of a social movement, or a serious gesture, capable of provoking serial disasters? This question as technical as a political was at the heart of the nine hours of hearing of the trial of four ex-maintenance agents of RTE, company manager of the public electricity transport network, Tuesday, February 28, before the Paris Criminal Court.
The defendants admitted to having programmed losses of “telecondited” in high voltage electric posts around Valenciennes in June and July 2022 to “be heard” on their demands for wage increases, while a tough conflict social has been shaking the company for four months already.
When she finds this simultaneous loss of observability and maneuverability of the network, the company suspects an act of maliciousness and files complaints against X on July 26 in Lille. These facts indicate the first minutes, may constitute an offense in article R323-37 of the energy code, liable to 1,500 euros fine.
But the incident changes its scale three days later when the Director of Safety of the RTE group, former gendarmerie general Marc Betton, directly alerts the Directorate General of Internal Security (DGSI) of these facts likely To provoke “in the worst scenarios” of uncontrolled “electricity cuts” in Hauts-de-France, Belgium and England.
put up, arrested, dismissed
On the same day, the cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office officially enters the DGSI, requalifying the facts as “obstructing a data processing system”, and above all “computer sabotage”, repressed by article 411-9 of the Criminal Code, which evokes “the infringement of the fundamental interests of the nation”, provides for sentences of up to fifteen years of criminal imprisonment (twenty years in the event of collusion with a foreign power) and triggers an exceptional procedure, in its means of investigation and measures of constraints.
Quickly identified by an internal survey of RTE, supported by the technical means of the DGSI – Geolocation, Listening – The four men are laid off in September. Thirties without a criminal record, model employees. Arrested and handcuffed in front of their children, they spend sixty-six in police custody. There they recognize the facts. They have all been dismissed since.
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