After the world’s largest cryptocurrency firm, Binance, is in the hands of the French lender Credit Mutuel Arkea, it’s the turn of the cyberattacks, with the hackers reportedly stealing around 100 million euro (USD 112.61 million) through a digital heist.
The incident, made public by the French lender on Wednesday, is a rare example of cybercriminals successfully stealing a substantial amount of money directly from a mainstream banking institution.
French prosecutors have launched an investigation into the attack, with the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office handling the case alongside France’s cybercrime police.
According to Credit Mutuel Arkea, the attackers used an account belonging to the banking group to execute fraudulent transactions.
The lender said the stolen funds weren’t in cryptocurrency, but they could have been converted to digital assets after the theft.
The bank temporarily suspended certain transactions as a precautionary measure, resulting in delays to some transfers.
However, it stressed that customer assets had not been affected.
A spokesperson also rejected media reports suggesting that Fortuneo, its online banking subsidiary, had been the entry point for the attack.
The incident has attracted attention from cybersecurity specialists because successful thefts involving large financial institutions remain relatively uncommon.
Rafay Baloch, CEO of cybersecurity and security engineering firm RedSecLabs, described the attack as unprecedented in Europe.
He told Reuters that banking institutions were increasingly being targeted through sophisticated application-layer attacks and social engineering techniques.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that it received a complaint from Credit Mutuel Arkea on Wednesday and immediately opened an investigation.
The bank declined to identify the third-party service provider whose platform was used in the attack. It also confirmed that it had informed the European Central Bank (ECB), French banking supervisors and prosecutors.
France’s banking regulator, the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), declined to issue a public statement on the matter.
The Credit Mutuel Arkea incident comes amid a broader wave of cyberattacks targeting financial institutions and digital infrastructure.
It follows the reported theft of approximately USD 6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance the previous week, alongside cyberattacks targeting internet-connected refrigerators in Europe.
Financial regulators worldwide have also increased warnings about cybersecurity risks, particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) creates new opportunities for increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Credit Mutuel Arkea, headquartered in Brittany, is a French cooperative banking group serving more than 5.8 million customers and holding 211.5 billion euro in assets.
It is part of the wider Credit Mutuel banking network while retaining significant strategic autonomy.