victim of a cyberattack, the FFR warns its 265,000 licensees

The FFR was the target of a computer attack on the night of June 7 to 8. smolaw11 / stock.adobe.com

The French Rugby Federation (FFR), victim of a cyberattack in early Junewarned its licensees on Tuesday of possible disclosures of “personal data” on the “dark web» and encouraged them to be vigilant to «any attempt at fraud“, in a letter of which AFP has read. According to the digital forensic report, “the hackers intended to extract information and documents (…), temporarily had access to a large volume of data stored on the FFR server and (…) some of this data contained in particular personal data likely to concern licensees», Explains the FFR.

“The exact nature and amount of potentially exfiltrated data cannot, however, be precisely determined, at least at this stage.“, she specifies. “Given the modus operandi of hackers (…), it is likely that some of this data will be disclosed on the dark web from June 27, the FFR having decided, in agreement with the gendarmerie services, not to take any action. ransom demands“, she adds.

“Minimize the impact of this attack on its activities and to avoid any recurrence in the future”

Consequently, the authority recommends to its approximately 265,000 licensees to “change pwords” of their different accounts and to be “particularly vigilant to any attempt at fraud, in particular by e-mail or SMS“. Last Thursday, the FFR announced in a press release that it had been the target of a computer attack, on the night of June 7 to 8, “which had mainly affected mail servers“.

“In terms of impact, the Federation was unable to retrieve the activity logs of some of the mailboxes that were encrypted during the attack“, she had then specified. Before concluding that the necessary measures had been taken “to minimize the impact of this attack on its business and to prevent any recurrence in the future“. Several French hospitals have notably been the target of cyberattacks in recent months.