Orange France hack sees 800,000 customer details compromised

Orange states that the stolen passwords "cannot be used"

Telecoms giant Orange has admitted it has been the victim of a widescale hacking attack as 800,000 customer details of its service in France were compromised.

The attack, which affected 800,000 customers, apparently took place on 16 January 2014, through the company's website at Orange.fr, and includes names, email addresses, phone numbers and more.

Orange states that this figure represents three per cent of the company's user base in France, and has confirmed that passwords were also stolen.

However, Orange technical director Laurent Benatar said that Orange had closed the "My Account" page on the site, which was the entry way through which the hack took place, very soon after the attack was detected.

Orange has also stated that the stolen passwords "cannot be used", which is thought to allude to a form of encryption being placed on the data.

A similar hack on Adobe's customer base in October 2013, which the company initially said only affected 2.9 million users, was eventually shown to have affected 38 million. Stolen passwords, despite Adobe's initial claims of encryption, were also correctly identified, despite the apparent salting and hashing processes carried out on them.

Orange customers in France should change their passwords regardless, and be on a close lookout for erroneous emails or other phishing scams related to the stolen data.