Hackers post thousands of national registration and bank account numbers on the dark web

The personal data of 700,000 people, sourced from a database belonging to the Walloon training network IFAPME, has been made available online for free on a forum on the dark web. Website FrenchBreaches that tracks data breaches has highlighted the hack. The data includes sensitive information such as bank account numbers and national registration numbers.

IFAPME is the Walloon Institute for Work-Based Learning and for the Self-Employed and SMEs, comparable to SYNTRA in Flanders. The training network fell victim to a cyberattack last February. During the attack, hackers stole data from over 700,000 people, including 85,000 bank account numbers.

As the data has now been republished free of charge, the exposure of those affected may increase further. According to FrenchBreaches, this is a particularly sensitive breach given the nature of the information disclosed.

“Using this data, it could be possible to link various pieces of personal information to a single individual: identity, postal address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, national registration number and, for some individuals, bank details as well,” the report states.

‘The presence of Belgian national registration numbers is particularly worrying due to the permanent nature of that identification code. On their own, IBAN numbers are not sufficient to simply make payments from a bank account. However, when combined with an identity and other personal details, they can facilitate certain forms of fraud.’

According to FrenchBreaches, phishing attempts can appear more credible when genuine personal data is used in an email, text message or telephone call.