French telecommunications giant Orange SA on Wednesday said hackers stole data about 1.3 million people in an attack last month, the latest in a series of cyberattacks on companies, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Orange said hackers stole personal information such as names, telephone numbers and email addresses for clients or potential customers in the attack, the second cyberassault on the company this year.
The data stolen from Orange was used in so-called phishing, the company said. Phishing is a ploy in which hackers pretend to be from a trustworthy source such as a bank or a company and contact people to trick them into revealing other sensitive information, such as passwords or credit-card numbers.
Orange detected the data theft on April 18 but only revealed the attack two weeks later, after it took steps to repair the security issue and inform clients who were victims of the attack, a company spokeswoman said.
Orange said the security breach has been closed and that the company is working on trying to prevent similar attacks in the future.
Read more of this report from The Wall Street Journal.