Fortuneo, the online bank of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa victim of a cyberattack allowing “fraudulent operations”

This is completely new. For the first time in France and undoubtedly a traditional bank was the victim of a cyberattack. The Crédit Mutuel Arkéa bank, headquartered in Brittany, declared on Wednesday that it had been the victim of a computer attack which allowed “fraudulent transactions to be carried out”. It was its Fortuneo online bank that was hacked, according to our information. The incident is “today under control”, indicated. Crédit Mutuel Arkéa did not specify the amount of the embezzlement, but it would amount to at least 150 million euros. Arkéa, however, indicates to its customers that this incident “has no financial consequences for them”, in a press release.

“As soon as this attack was detected, our teams immediately mobilized and took, as a precautionary measure, the decision to temporarily suspend certain transactions in order to secure operations and prevent any new fraudulent movements,” declares Arkéa. “The resumption of these operations will take place quickly, under optimal security conditions, once the final checks and security measures have been carried out,” adds the bank.

The attack reportedly lasted several days. According to specialist journalist Grégory Raymond, “the fraudsters were able to send transfers from Fortuneo by setting the name of the beneficiary themselves, he explains, on his X account. This would in practice amount to being able to send funds to any account holder in the world, under the name of their choice.” The question remains, how did they get into the system? According to some, the hackers used methods similar to those used in the hacking of the Binance cryptocurrency platform. For his part, Grégory evokes an “internal human flaw.” “This could be a variation of the president scam, which consists of impersonating a manager to obtain something from a collaborator,” he writes.

The stolen sums were then transferred to cryptocurrency exchange platforms. This allows the money to be recovered without leaving a trace.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa has the backbone strong enough to cope with these losses. The equity of this federation of the Crédit Mutuel mutual banking group amounts to 10 billion euros.