Third major incident in the French public sector in as many months
A hacker accessed data from 1.2 million French bank accounts at the end of January.
The attacker, who has not been publicly identified, gained access using a government official’s stolen credentials, the French Economy Ministry said.
According to the original reporting in Le Monde, the individual(s) were not able to directly access the bank accounts. Rather, they were able to open and consult information in a national bank account database called FICOBA.
That database may not show account balances or allow money to be moved, but access can be damaging in other ways. The Economy Ministry said in a statement that FICOBA contains “personal data such as bank account numbers, name of the account holder, address and in certain cases the account owner’s tax number.”
Remediation measures were taken immediately when the unauthorised access was detected, and affected individuals will be notified in the coming days, the chief of France’s Public Finances told Agence France-Presse.
They added that a criminal complaint had been filed and the CNIL, France’s data protection watchdog, had been informed.
It remains unclear if the threat actor was a lone individual or a state-sponsored attacker.
George Foley, security spokesperson for ESET Ireland, said, “Even where money can’t be moved directly, the details are still valuable. They help criminals sound convincing. That’s when you get the ‘we need to verify you’ calls, the fake security emails, and the pressure to act fast.”
The French banking incident follows other major public sector intrusions in the country in December.
In one case a major incident disrupted the national postal service, La Poste, affecting digital banking and online services for millions of people.
In the same month hackers breached the Ministry of the Interior and claimed they had accessed data on more than 16 million citizens – also, apparently, thanks to stolen login credentials.
A 22-year-old man was later arrested in connection with the attack.