French Finance Ministry announced on Thursday evening that a “malicious actor” claimed to have breached the network system of France’s General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) at the end of June, and allegedly stole a large amount of personal and business taxpayers’ data. The Ministry confirmed that the system was illegally accessed, and some taxpayers’ information may have been queried and extracted.
According to Reuters, the Finance Ministry stated in a release that after an investigation, authorities confirmed the occurrence of the cyber attack, with the intruders querying and extracting data related to taxpayers.
Currently, investigations are ongoing to determine the specific data that was accessed or stolen, as well as the exact number of affected taxpayers. The Finance Ministry mentioned that further investigation results will be disclosed in due course.
The Ministry stated that affected individuals will receive notifications outlining which data might have been accessed or extracted, and what precautionary measures should be taken if necessary.
On the other hand, the platform “FrenchBreaches,” which tracks cyber attacks in France, reported that hackers claimed to have potentially stolen data of around 700,000 taxpayers (approximately 678,438 records), a figure yet to be confirmed by the French Finance Ministry or DGFiP.
As of now, a spokesperson for the French Finance Ministry has not responded immediately to requests for comments on the data reported on FrenchBreaches.
Authorities are still investigating the scale of this incident and the extent of data leakage. Whether affected individuals need to take further precautionary measures will also depend on official notifications.