French bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa hit in cyberattack — up to $133 million stolen and systems shut down

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, a prominent French banking and financial services organization, disclosed a recent cyberattack resulting in the theft of approximately $133 million from the bank itself. The stolen funds did not belong to customers, but rather to the bank itself, which were converted into cryptocurrency to facilitate easier illicit transactions.

The incident was initially detected by ZachXBT, a cryptocurrency analyst and blockchain fraud investigator. ZachXBT reported on November 2, 2026, that an EU entity had lost over $106 million across multiple centralized exchange accounts due to the attack. The threat actor then swapped USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar) for Ethereum (ETH) and transferred tokens to instant exchanges like WellWallet and Keyrex.

Some funds were further converted to Monero (XMR) through Wagyu and later bridged across multiple blockchain networks. Blockchain technology, often seen as a preferred platform for financial fraud, was unfortunately exploited in this case. It took a day for the attack to be publicly discovered, allowing blockchain analysts like ZachXBT to identify and report the theft.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa stated that customer assets remained unaffected, but only experienced delayed execution of certain transfer operations. The bank temporarily suspended specific transactions as a precautionary measure, ensuring their own operations remained secure. The attackers are believed to have gained access through one of the bank's service providers, though the specific provider remains undisclosed.

While no claim of responsibility has been made, some experts, including ZachXBT, do not believe the attackers were associated with the Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean cybercriminal organization.