Cyber attack on French finance ministry

The French finance ministry has come under sustained cyber attack since December from Internet hackers targetting the treasury and G20 documents, said Paris-Match magazine.

"Between December and this weekend, the ministry of finance and the economy was the victim of an unprecedented cyber attack," the publication reported.

The management of the French Treasury department was the prime target of the attacks.
The origin of the attacks had not yet been established.

"We noted that a certain amount of information was redirected to Chinese sites. But that does not say very much," a senior official told Paris-Match.

Patrick Pailloux, directeur general of the French National Agency for Information Technology Security, told the magazine the hackers were after "documents related to the French presidency of the G20 and to international economic affairs."

"The actors were determined professionals and organised. It is the first attack of this size and scale against the French state," he added.

More than 150 ministry computers had been hacked and numerous documents pirated. Individuals were not targetted in the attack.

Bercy has filed an official complaint with the French courts and the French secret service has taken up the case.

$1 trillion global loss from data theft

According to a study released by security technology firm McAfee Inc. , data theft and breaches from cybercrime may have cost businesses as much as $1 trillion globally in lost intellectual property and expenditures for repairing the damage last year.

McAfee made the projection based on responses to a survey of more than 800 chief information officers in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and Dubai.

The respondents estimated that they lost data worth a total of $4.6 billion and spent about $600 million cleaning up after breaches.

The California-based company launched the survey after detecting a rapid acceleration of malicious software, last year.

According to McAfee Inc. - CEO David DeWalt, “This was a very insidious type of malware that was designed either to steal your data, steal your identity, steal your money, and in many cases the scale as well as the sophistication was very alarming”.

The survey of 800 companies in 8 countries showed that 80 percent of malware aimed to make a financial gain, in contrast to traditional viruses and worms which just had nuisance value.

Data lost accidentally or through theft can be expensive to replace and simultaneously, it can be damaging to a company's reputation or brand.