Orange customers in France could see a spike in phishing attempts after hackers nabbed hundreds of thousands of customers' unencrypted personal data in an attack on the operator's website, reports ZDNet.com.
Hackers accessed personal data on three percent of Orange's customers in France, the company confirmed, using the 'My Account' section of orange.fr. According to local reports, the attack took place on 16 January, and affected nearly 800,000 individuals.
"These attackers accessed personal data from three percent of Orange customers in France, but the "My Account" page was closed as soon as the attack was detected and technical measures were immediately taken to stop the attack," an Orange spokesperson said in a statement to ZDNet.
According to Orange, customer passwords were not accessed and "cannot be used", suggesting these were hashed or encrypted. However, the attackers did access enough personal data to mount a phishing attack. Data that was accessed includes customers' names, mailing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and customer account IDs, although the last set of data was "masked" or "truncated".
Read more of this report from ZDNet.com.