French government systems hacked - over 1.2 million private financial accounts hit

• Hackers breached France’s FICOBA registry, stealing data on 1.2M bank accounts
• Exposed details include IBANs, addresses, and taxpayer IDs, enabling SEPA debit fraud
• Authorities pulled FICOBA offline, restored access, and are notifying affected users

The French national bank account registry (FICOBA), a state agency which manages a registry of all bank accounts in France, has suffered an attack which saw hackers gain information on 1.2 million user accounts, including some rather sensitivedata which could be leveraged in subsequent cyberattacks and scam campaigns.

The news was confirmed by the French Ministry of Finance, which said login credentials were stolen from a civil servant, and used to access a database containing all bank accounts opened in French banking institutions.

From there, the unidentified miscreants took data from 1.2 million user accounts, including bank account details (RIBs and IBANs), account holder identities, postal addresses and, in ...