Telecom giant Orange warns of disruption amid ongoing cyberattack
Orange, a French telecommunications giant and one of the largest phone providers in the world, announced on Monday that it was the victim of an unspecified cyberattack.
In the announcement, the company said that it detected a cyberattack “on one of its information systems” on July 25, and that it proceeded to “isolate potentially affected services and minimize any impact.”
The move to isolate affected systems, Orange added, caused disruptions to some of the company’s platforms, as well as business customers and some public sector services mostly in France, according to a translation of the statement. The announcement said that the solutions the company is implementing will gradually restore services by Wednesday, and that “there is no evidence to suggest that any internal or customer data has been exfiltrated.”
Orange did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, which included questions about the nature of the cyberattack, and whether the company has the technical means to detect any data exfiltration.
The company said in the announcement that it is engaging and informing affected customers, and filed a complaint with “relevant authorities,” without providing specifics. Companies in Europe that are subject to GDPR, the bloc’s data protection rules, are required to notify their local data protection authorities within three days of a suspected data breach.
Orange serves 291 million customers worldwide, across 26 different countries, and has 127,000 employees, according to the company.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai is a Senior Writer at TechCrunch, where he covers hacking, cybersecurity, surveillance, and privacy. You can contact Lorenzo securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, on Keybase/Telegram @lorenzofb, or via email at lorenzo@techcrunch.com.
