Hackers Divert €100m From French Bank, Customers’ Funds Safe

A French banking group, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, has disclosed that about €100 million ($112.61 million) was stolen from its accounts in a cyberattack, raising fresh concerns over the growing vulnerability of financial institutions to sophisticated digital threats.

The bank said on Thursday that it was still assessing the extent of the loss and could not yet determine how much of the stolen funds it would recover.

The attack that occurred this week involved hackers using the bank’s account to carry out fraudulent transactions with other financial institutions. The transfers may have enabled the attackers to convert the funds into cryptocurrency through specialised platforms.

However, the bank said its customers’ accounts were not involved in the incident, stressing that their funds remained safe despite the disruption to some banking operations.

According to a spokesperson for Crédit Mutuel Arkéa,  “the bank had temporarily suspended certain transactions as a precautionary measure, resulting in delays to some transfers, but customer assets were not affected”.

The bank also dismissed reports that its online banking subsidiary, Fortuneo, was the entry point for the attack, insisting that neither the subsidiary nor its customers’ accounts were involved.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa declined to identify the third-party service provider whose platform was used in the attack. It said the incident had been reported to the European Central Bank, French banking supervisors and prosecutors.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that its cybercrime unit received a complaint from the bank on Wednesday and immediately opened an investigation into an organised attack on an automated data processing system.

The development comes amid rising global concerns over cyberattacks targeting financial institutions, particularly as hackers deploy increasingly sophisticated techniques to exploit digital banking infrastructure.

The incident also follows the reported theft of $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from the Binance exchange last week, as well as a wave of cyberattacks targeting internet-connected refrigerators in Europe.

Financial regulators have continued to warn about the risks posed by cyber threats, including the growing use of artificial intelligence in cybercrime.

The bank further added that it was working to recover the stolen funds. At the same time, investigations continue into how the attackers gained access to its systems and the extent of the financial damage.