Cyberattacks on the internet are becoming more numerous and are increasingly targeting official websites. Several French organizations have once again fallen victim, including France Travail, the Family Allowance Fund (CAF) and the internship payment portal of the Services and Payment Agency (ASP).
New cyberattacks target French institutions
In a fully digitized society, cyberattacks are an increasingly widespread scourge. Thousands of attacks are now detected around the world every week. Over the past year, their number has increased by 18% in Europe alone, compared with 16% worldwide.
According to data from the French National Agency for Information Systems Security (ANSSI), these operations particularly affect education and research (34%), as well as ministries and local authorities (24%), healthcare (10%) and telecommunications (9%).
France has not been spared, as shown by the hacks at Bercy last May, followed more recently by the breach at the Ministry of National Education and the hack of the National Agency for Secure Documents (ANTS) by a 17-year-old. The list is not exhaustive.
This string of incidents could continue, judging by the 64 new data breaches reported in ANSSI’s latest monthly report. The report is part of Operation REACTIV (Interministerial Response & Action to Data Breaches), launched in early September at the Prime Minister’s request in an attempt to contain the situation.
Among these cyberattacks, 5 directly target ministries or public bodies attached to them: France Travail, the CAF’s VACAF service, the Services and Payment Agency, the French Office for Biodiversity and the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Data now circulating on the dark web
According to the information available, these attacks too often follow the same pattern: inadequately protected websites host sensitive data belonging to many French people. Hackers then hasten to resell it on the dark web to fuel phishing campaigns and other targeted attacks.
France Travail was hacked on September 26 using an agent’s compromised account. The theft affected more than 60000 agents and professionals. This figure seems almost anecdotal compared with the 1.6 million records stolen from the CAF’s VACAF platform, which is dedicated to vacation assistance. The data was extracted using stolen partner accounts and automated infostealer software.
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The French Office for Biodiversity was also affected: a flaw in the payment API of its exam registration portal made it possible to extract the data of more than a thousand people, including minors. At the Services and Payment Agency, data belonging to 30500 users was stolen from the DEFI portal, which handles payments to interns. Finally, the personal data of around a hundred users, agents, librarians and external users of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs was compromised.
These leaks put users of the affected websites at greater risk. Their names, addresses and phone numbers, at a minimum, are now circulating on the dark web and could serve the interests of malicious actors looking for victims to scam, or even to show up at their homes to steal their cryptocurrencies.
