Cyber attack exposes sensitive data about a nuclear power plant in France

A cyber attack on a French firm Ingerop allowed attackers to access confidential documents related to nuclear power plant plans in France.

The hacker stole more than 65 gigabytes of documents back in June, the huge trove of documents includes nuclear power plant plants and blueprints for prisons and tram networks.

According to the media, some of the stolen data were found on a rented server in Germany.

“Thousands of sensitive documents pertaining to nuclear power plants, prisons and tram networks have been stolen from the servers of a French company in a cyberattack, German and French media have reported Friday.” reported the German website DW.com.

“The data illegally accessed from the French company Ingerop back in June amounted to more than 65 gigabytes, according to reports by German public broadcaster NDR, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and French newspaper Le Monde.”

According to an Ingerop spokeswoman quoted by NDR, hackers accessed to more than 11,000 files from a dozen projects.

The sensitive documents include detailed information on the plant, such as the locations of video cameras for a French high-security prison and documents about a planned nuclear-waste dump in northeastern France,

Attackers also stole personal details about more than a thousand Ingerop workers.

Some of the documents were related to France’s oldest nuclear power plant Fessenheim that is going to close by 2022 and that is located on the border to Germany, reports said.

The availability of such kind of data in the wrong hands could expose the plant and the company workers to many threats, including a terrorist plot.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – nuclear power plant, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.