Was M6 hit by ransomware?

M6 was listed by the Doppelpaymer ransomware operation (France), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Doppelpaymer ransomware group?

Doppelpaymer is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the M6 breach?

Doppelpaymer published data attributed to M6. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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M6

Claimed by Doppelpaymer · listed 7 years ago

82m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedOct 12, 2019
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Doppelpaymer
Status: Data leaked
Country: France
Sector: Communication
Listed on leak site: Oct 12, 2019

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

M6 (Métropole Télévision) is a major French commercial television broadcaster headquartered in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. It operates the M6 channel along with several other free-to-air and pay-TV channels, and runs the streaming platform M6+ (6play). The group is one of France's largest private audiovisual media companies, reaching millions of viewers nationally.

Industry: Broadcast Television & Streaming Media
Address: 89 avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92575 Neuilly-sur-Seine Cedex, France
Employees: 1001-5000
Founded: 1987

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data is marked as published by a known ransomware group targeting a large national broadcaster, implying confirmed exfiltration of significant business data; the scale of M6's operations and potential subscriber/employee PII elevates severity, though no specific regulated data categories are confirmed from the available evidence.

BitPaymer ransomware operators claim an attack on M6 with data published status indicated, suggesting exfiltration and/or encryption occurred and data has been released; no specific data volume or ransom amount was stated in the available post.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Internal business documents
Corporate files
Potentially employee PII
Potentially subscriber/customer data

Sources

Victim sitem6.fr

Source

Indexed 7 years ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About Doppelpaymer

DoppelPaymer is a sophisticated ransomware operation that emerged in May 2019, operating as a financially motivated cybercriminal enterprise focused on high-value targets across multiple sectors. The group is believed to have connections to Russia and operates independently rather than as a traditional Ransomware-as-a-Service model, though they have been linked to the earlier Dridex banking trojan operations and may share infrastructure or personnel with the Evil Corp cybercriminal organization. DoppelPaymer operators primarily gain initial access through phishing campaigns, exploitation of Remote Desktop Protocol vulnerabilities, and leveraging existing Dridex infections, utilizing tools such as Cobalt Strike, PowerShell Empire, and various living-off-the-land techniques before deploying their custom ransomware that employs RSA-2048 and AES-256 encryption algorithms. The group pioneered double extortion tactics by operating a leak site called "Dopple Leaks" where they publish stolen data from victims who refuse to pay ransoms, systematically exfiltrating sensitive information before encryption deployment. Notable campaigns include attacks on major healthcare systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, critical infrastructure targets, and educational institutions, with the group demanding ransoms typically ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million dollars, leading to FBI alerts and international law enforcement attention. As of recent observations, DoppelPaymer activity has significantly decreased since late 2021, with many researchers believing the group has either ceased operations or rebranded under a different identity following increased law enforcement pressure. The group has been linked to 34 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 25, 2017; most recent post April 10, 2021. The operation is currently inactive.

Also tracked as: Pay OR Grief, BitPaymer, IEncrypt, FriedEx.

Timeline of this disclosure

October 12, 2019M6 listed by Doppelpaymeron the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by Doppelpaymer

Doppelpaymer has been linked to 34 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Doppelpaymer dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Communication sector, which has 26 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, M6 is reported in France, a country with 612 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Doppelpaymer means M6 appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CERT-FR (France), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Doppelpaymer's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.