French regional bank Credit Mutuel Arkea suffered an interesting cyberattack in which it lost around $112 million or 100 million euros in fraudulent transactions by the hackers. However, they didn't touch any of the customers' accounts, and thus the bank's customers faced no financial losses, as reported by AFP on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
Instead, the hackers accessed the bank's account to transfer the funds to other banks.
The bank later announced that it had contained the attack, with no clients' accounts being compromised.
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The stolen funds were converted into cryptocurrencies using specialised platforms, as indicated by the bank, and out of the total funds, the bank was able to block a portion, while they are taking necessary steps to recover the remaining amount that has been stolen.
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French Prosecutors Open Investigation
The bank ruled out human error as the cause of the fraudulent transfers, describing the incident as a sophisticated external attack. However, it did not disclose how the hackers gained access to its systems or identify those potentially responsible.
The Paris public prosecutor's office confirmed to AFP that it had opened an official investigation into the same. The investigation concerns an "attack on an automated data processing system by an organised group", it said.
The bank declined to confirm the exact loss figure, which is anticipated to be $133 million by French newspaper Le Telegramme, but acknowledged the scale of the financial loss.
However, the lender said that the amount of financial loss is not so large as to undermine the bank's financial health or solidity and that they are still figuring out the actual number.
Credit Mutuel Arkea reported a net profit of 230 million euros in the first half of the year.
Crypto Investigator Flags Fraud
Earlier this week, Independent Crypto Investigator ZachXBT revealed the fraud on social media, stating that the stolen funds were directed via multiple accounts that were opened on cryptocurrency exchange platforms.
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