- Hackers breached France’s FICOBA registry and stole data from 1.2 million bank accounts
- The exposed details include IBANs, addresses and taxpayer IDs, enabling SEPA debit fraud.
- Authorities have taken FICOBA offline, restored access and are notifying affected users
France’s national registry of bank accounts (FICOBA), a state agency that manages a registry of all bank accounts in France, suffered an attack in which hackers obtained information on 1.2 million user accounts, including some fairly sensitive data that could be exploited in subsequent cyberattacks and scam campaigns.
The news was confirmed by the French Ministry of Finance, which said that the login credentials were stolen from a public official and used to access a database containing all bank accounts opened at French banking institutions.
From there, the unidentified bad actors took data from 1.2 million user accounts, including bank account details (RIB and IBAN), account holder identities, postal addresses and, in some cases, taxpayer identification numbers.
Not purely theoretical
While this information can be used in all types of fraudulent activity, perhaps the most worrying is SEPA direct debit fraud.
In the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) system (of which France is a part), knowing someone’s IBAN can allow a fraudster to initiate unauthorized direct debit mandates with certain merchants. Banks can reverse fraudulent debits, but victims will still suffer financial loss and potential administrative burden.
This is not a theoretical risk either, since beepcomputer Banks have already been notified of multiple email and SMS campaigns attempting to steal data or money directly from recipients.
French citizens and bank customers are advised to remain vigilant, do not respond to these emails and contact their bank directly if they have any questions. We don’t know how successful these campaigns have been.
After discovering the attack, French authorities restricted access and took FICOBA offline. It has since been restored and is currently operating normally. Users affected by this attack are being notified one by one.
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