2.9 million customers of a bank victims of hacking

Canada's leading co-operative bank, and fifth in the world, with $ 304 billion in assets (204 billion euros) for some seven million customers concentrated mainly in Quebec, Desjardins Group has noted a suspicious intrusion into its networks. December, but it was only last Friday that she was informed by the police of this massive flight, said its CEO Guy Cormier.

"Personal information of 2.9 million members was shared with people outside the organization. Specifically, this is information from 2.7 million individual members and 173,000 corporate members", according to a press release from the first bank in Quebec.

In particular, the piracy concerned surname, first name, date of birth, social insurance number, address, telephone number, email "as well as some information"on the"transactional habits" and the "products"banking held by customers at Desjardins, it was specified.

Assuring that additional security measures had been put in place immediately, Desjardins Group Senior Vice President Denis Berthiaume called on his clients to "exercise vigilance at the level of (their) accounts", promising to compensate them for any misappropriation of funds.

Mr. Berthiaume explained that the hacking was carried out by an employee who had "used stratagems to collect data. He is not a specialist in technology. It was someone who worked in the data".

This employee, dismissed, was "stopped"then released, said the police in Laval (northern suburbs of Montreal), pointing out that the investigation was"In progress".

"This major incident affecting Desjardins Group today puts into perspective the omnipresent risk that now weighs on all organizations in terms of information security risks.", responded in a statement the Autorité des marchés financiers du Québec.