Security News
The French data protection watchdog on Tuesday fined electricity provider Électricité de France €600,000 for violating the European Union General Data Protection Regulation requirements. The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés said the electric utility breached European regulation by storing the passwords for over 25,800 accounts by hashing them using the MD5 algorithm as recently as July 2022.
A French-speaking criminal group codenamed OPERA1ER has pulled off more than 30 cyber-heists against telecom organizations and banks across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, stealing upwards of $30 million over four years, according to security researchers. In one robbery, "a network of more than 400 mule subscriber accounts were used to quickly cash out stolen funds mostly done overnight via ATMs," the researchers wrote in a report this month.
Major financial and insurance companies located in French-speaking nations in Africa have been targeted over the past two years as part of a persistent malicious campaign codenamed DangerousSavanna. Countries targeted include Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, and Togo, with the spear-phishing attacks heavily focusing on Ivory Coast in recent months, Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point said in a Tuesday report.
The Center Hospitalier Sud Francilien, a 1000-bed hospital located 28km from the center of Paris, suffered a cyberattack on Sunday, which has resulted in the medical center referring patients to other establishments and postponing appointments for surgeries."This attack on the computer network makes the hospital's business software, the storage systems, and the information system relating to patient admissions inaccessible for the time being," explains CHSF's announcement.
Hospitals and Health Care group has disconnected all incoming and outgoing Internet connections after discovering they suffered a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of sensitive administrative and patient data. The cyberattack occurred on April 19th and affected the CHs of Vitry-le-François and Saint-Dizier, causing GHT to disconnect Internet connections to the hospitals to prevent the attack's spread and further data theft.
New Serpent backdoor malware targets French entities with unforeseen method. A new backdoor dubbed Serpent has been found on internet, infecting French entities in the construction and government sectors.
An advanced threat actor has been spotted using distinctive, novel methods to backdoor French entities in the construction, real estate, and government industries. The attack starts with a well-known technique - emails containing a macro-enabled Microsoft Word document masquerading as information relating to the GDPR - and ends up with an attempt to install a backdoor on target systems.
Researchers have exposed a new targeted email campaign aimed at French entities in the construction, real estate, and government sectors that leverages the Chocolatey Windows package manager to deliver a backdoor called Serpent on compromised systems. Enterprise security firm Proofpoint attributed the attacks to a likely advanced threat actor based on the tactics and the victimology patterns observed.
Over the last year or two we've noticed that the steady stream of sextortion emails we used to receive - at one time, we were getting several variants on the theme each week - has dwindled to almost nothing. Often, attackers stick to messages in plain text or HTML for the obvious reason that web or email links in those messages typically turn into directly tempting "Calls to action".
The info-stealing malware TinyNuke has re-emerged in a new campaign targeting French users with invoice-themed lures in emails sent to corporate addresses and individuals working in manufacturing, technology, construction, and business services. The TinyNuke malware activity first appeared in 2017, culminated in 2018, then dropped significantly in 2019, and almost faded out of existence in 2020.