Orange: hack involved 1.3 million customers

Orange has admitted that the personal data of 1.3 million French users was stolen in a hacker attack. According to the telecom provider, a “limited number” of names of customers and potential customers were captured in the attack.

The hackers gained access to email addresses, landline and mobile phone numbers, data from internet providers and dates of birth of the customers on an unspecified system from Orange. Orange originally expected that the break-in, discovered on April 18, would have affected several tens of thousands of people. It now appears that approximately 1.3 million customers and potential customers have been affected.

The telecom provider said via Datanews that the company deliberately waited to disclose the attack because it first wanted to determine its scope, lock down the technical network and ensure that the vulnerability no longer exists. Orange also says that the company fears that the stolen customer data will be used by criminals for phishing.

It is not the first time this year that Orange customer data has been stolen: in January there was also an attack on Orange systems. Then hackers managed to steal the data of 800,000 customers. In that attack, names, addresses, telephone numbers, customer numbers and e-mail addresses were stolen. Even then, Orange warned of a possible phishing attack.