Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 18, #148

Bouygues Telecom, the third-largest phone carrier in France, has confirmed a cyberattack and data breach affecting millions of its customers.

In a statement posted to its website, the telecommunications giant said the hack allowed the intruders to access the personal information on 6.4 million customer accounts. Bouygues said it detected the cyberattack on August 4, but did not give a timeframe for when the breach was remediated.

In a separate page dedicated to victims of the cyberattack, Bouygues said the stolen data includes customers’ contact information and contractual data, their civil status (or company data if the subscriber is a professional), as well as IBANs, or international bank account numbers.

Bouygues said it has about 26.9 million mobile customers.

The cyberattack has been reported to France’s data protection agency, CNIL.

At the time of publication, Bouygues’ webpage about the cyberattack contained a hidden “noindex” tag in its source code, which instructs search engines to ignore the page, making it difficult for anyone searching the web to find the page. 

A spokesperson for Bouygues did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking for details about the cyberattack, or explain why the page was hidden from search engines.

News of the breach comes soon after a cyberattack at French telecom giant Orange, the country’s largest phone carrier and one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world. On July 29, Orange told customers to expect disruption as it moved to “isolate potentially affected services.” Orange serves more than 290 million customers worldwide.