French government messaging system breached via social engineering attack
By
Maxwell Cooter
Summary
The French government's secure messaging system (used by 825,000 users) was breached not through technology failure but via social engineering — an intruder took over a user's account to access unencrypted public chat rooms. DINUM (the French interministerial digital directorate) blocked the affected user's access and is investigating. While encryption was not broken, up to 73,467 users may have been exposed through the compromised account's access to public chat rooms.
Source
bskyFrench government messaging system breached via social engineering attackcsoonline.comKey quotes
· 3 pulledThe intruder gained access to the system by taking over their account, according to DINUM, the French government's interministerial digital directorate.
While the system's encryption was not broken, the intruder would have been able to view unencrypted public chat rooms accessible to the account taken over, potentially affecting 73,467 of the system's 825,000 users, DINUM said.
In this case, it wasn't the technology that was at fault, but a user
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