More than 5.8 million members and customers of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa have been told they will suffer no financial loss after a cyberattack enabled fraudulent transactions at the French bank.
The bank said the attackers reached it through a platform operated by one of its service providers. Arkéa described the breach as a sophisticated external attack and said it did not result from human error at the bank.
Crédit Mutuel Arkéa said on Wednesday that its teams had detected the attack, which allowed fraudulent transactions.
Hackers took money after entering the bank's IT networks, then used Arkéa's own account to send transactions to other banks. Customer accounts were not used.
The fraud was first disclosed publicly by ZachXBT, an independent investigator who tracks cryptocurrency transactions. According to AFP, ZachXBT said the funds moved through multiple accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges.
ZachXBT flagged $106 million in USDC and USDT withdrawn on 1 November from exchange accounts belonging to an unnamed EU entity, and posted about it on 2 November. The investigator traced a further $27 million on 3 November, bringing the total identified to $133 million.
Le Télégramme reported that $133mn (€118mn) had been stolen. Arkéa has not confirmed that precise figure and said it could validate only the order of magnitude.
The bank's management said it had taken 'the decision to temporarily suspend certain transactions in order to secure operations and prevent any new fraudulent movements'. Arkéa told Le Parisien that some funds had been frozen, while the amount involved was still being assessed.
The bank said the suspended transactions would resume shortly once final security checks and measures had been completed. It said the incident had been contained and operations were resuming during the morning.
Arkéa has not said how the attackers carried out the breach or identified those responsible. It said the sums involved did not threaten its financial health.
Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is headquartered in Brest, Brittany, in western France. It has total assets of €211.5 billion.
Comments (0)