back to article Mon Dieu! Nearly half the French population have data nabbed in massive breach

Nearly half the citizens of France have had their data exposed in a massive security breach at two third-party healthcare payment servicers, the French data privacy watchdog disclosed last week. Payments outfits Viamedis and Almerys both experienced breaches of their systems in late January, the National Commission on …

  1. Piro

    Made me order a Flipper Zero

    Now that was advertising that worked.

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: Made me order a Flipper Zero

      It does look like a fun toy, I'm not sure what I'd actually use it for though

      1. Piro

        Re: Made me order a Flipper Zero

        Yeah, I'm not too sure, I guess I'm leaning in to that "fun toy" aspect of it. Maybe I'll find a use for it. That said, I don't have lots of free time.

      2. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Made me order a Flipper Zero

        "It does look like a fun toy, I'm not sure what I'd actually use it for though"

        Amongst a plethora of illegal activities you could also break into cars that use RF for varying purposes.

      3. Bebu
        Windows

        Re: Made me order a Flipper Zero

        There is a write up over on Ars Technica but it appears to be a lower cost protocol analyser for various RF tech.

        Stated to be useless for stealing cars but one of Trudeau's (francophone?) ministers had his official car stolen three times which apparently really got on his tits (《courir sur son haricot》ou 《faire chier》)* which led to this ban.

        * Translation into québécois left to the interested reader. :)

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: Made me order a Flipper Zero

          I mentioned that it could be used to "break into" cars ie Open the Doors....

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

    Don't worry. I'm sure that spammers will be overjoyed to lend a helping hand, along with compromised emails, fake health portals and malware galore. They must be having a DefCon 1 moment right now.

    Some people are going to have loads of fun this year, apparently . . .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

      .... plus I suspect the French government will try and use this to persuade people that somehow moving the health data into the cloud is a "safe" option.

      I hope even the French will be able to see through that!!

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

        In one corner - put it all online, it's safe.

        In the other corner - all the stuff online just got swiped.

        Gonna have to be some massive spin control to convince anybody that having stuff in a cloud is in any way safe.

        In my experience the French government would usually take an alternative option and pass a law...that many will just ignore. Comme d'hab.

      2. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

        > I suspect the French government will try and use this to persuade people that somehow moving the health data into the cloud is a "safe" option.

        This breach concerns insurance, not health data. France has no centralised store of health data; it's up to you keep your own. It's a double-edged sword, of course. Privacy issues are non-existent, but you have to bring your own records (X-rays and the like) with you for each consultation.

        -A.

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

          "France has no centralised store of health data"

          Not quite true : There is now a shared source of data known as "ameli.fr".

          Your doctor and other health professional have access to shared information.

          1. heyrick Silver badge

            Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

            Don't forget there's also https://www.monespacesante.fr/ though for me it seems to be just my recent vaccinations and measurements I've made myself...?

            1. captain veg Silver badge

              Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

              That's true. It's wholly optional, though.

              -A.

          2. captain veg Silver badge

            Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

            Not being a native hypochondriac I make vanishingly little use of the healthcare system, but so far as I can tell Ameli also concerns insurance. There is a record of your reimbursements, but I don't think that counts as health data.

            https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_maladie_en_France

            -A.

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

      I guess it says something that I discover a massive data breach of info on Frenchies here rather than, say, someplace like https://www.ouest-france.fr/.

      Sheesh.

      My insurer, chosen by the company I work for, is Versperien, who may or may not be Axa these days, and may or may not be connected to the ones that got breached. I won't hold out any hope of a prompt notification if this does concern me.

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

        Something like this, you mean?

        -A.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

          Or this, from last week

          https://www.ledauphine.com/sante/2024/02/07/piratage-de-numeros-de-securite-sociale-33-millions-de-francais-concernes

          1. HuBo Silver badge
            Pirate

            Re: "it'll likely take some time to get the word out to nearly half the country"

            Yep, mass dématérialisation, that's Jello Biafra's efficiency and progress, ours once more for you. A step up from Johnny Rotten's pretty vacant past, where there was no point in asking the gov and post office workers for anything as, while they were in it, they didn't decide. Pffffrrrtttt, none of these past 40 years is going to be missed, olfactively, thanks to all-azimuth techno-fumble enshitification(*) (gas masks for everyone!)!

            (*)encrottification? Keep your compostable trash in the attic!

  3. Bitsminer Silver badge

    Faraday "cage" is (almost) all you need

    The car thieves use retransmission gadgets to widen the range of a key fob inside a house. Wrapping it in a metallic container like a biscuit tin helps a lot.

    But there are also the CAN-bus hackers that take off a headlight to access the car electronics and unlock the car and start the engine.

    The statistics are grim. About half of 45,000 cars stolen in 2023 in Ontario and Quebec were never recovered. Only about 1700 were intercepted at the ports of Montreal and Halifax.

    There is a CBC TV report where they tour the used-car lots of Accra, find a stolen car complete with Canadian registration, phone up the owner back in Canada and tell him what he left behind in the glove box. Funny and sad at the same time.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0u1OWYdJrs

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