{"id":66255,"date":"2026-08-17T16:33:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/66255\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T16:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T16:33:17","slug":"frances-tax-authority-admits-hackers-made-off-with-data-on-678000-individuals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/66255\/","title":{"rendered":"France\u2019s tax authority admits hackers made off with data on 678,000 individuals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>France\u2019s tax authority has disclosed a data breach after an attacker accessed the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) systems, saying the intrusion exposed data on 678,000 individuals and professionals.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/flag-france-650.webp\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"France tax authority breach\" title=\"France\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The incident came to light after an alleged attacker using the alias \u201cZeroBytes\u201d took credit on a cybercrime forum and listed a stolen database for sale.<\/p>\n<p>ZeroBytes <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/darkwebsonar\/status\/2088234070895460606\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a> the compromised portal contained data on about 20 million French citizens, but they only managed to extract 252,149 records containing data on more than 2 million people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe couldn\u2019t finish the extraction because honestly, it\u2019s just horrible to scrape and would have taken months. I\u2019m still logged into the panel, so if you want, you can buy it along with the database,\u201d they wrote. \u201cI\u2019m not going to sell this one for very much anyway. And as always, no mention from France about this incident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They said they gained access using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpnetsecurity.com\/2026\/07\/30\/enzoic-credential-exposure-risks-report\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">login credentials<\/a> and an MFA bypass technique.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpon detecting these intrusions, the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP) immediately suspended access to all accounts used in the identified incidents. However, the access controls carried out at that time did not reveal that these intrusions had led to data theft, due to the sophistication of the attack,\u201d DGFiP said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe in-depth investigations conducted since August 12, 2026, have established that, prior to their interruption, these access points had been used to consult and extract data concerning a total of 678,000 individuals and professionals, including tax data such as reference tax income, family quotient, and withholding tax rate, and, for businesses, data such as their company name and SIREN number,\u201d it <a href=\"https:\/\/presse.economie.gouv.fr\/acces-illegitime-au-systeme-dinformation-de-la-direction-generale-des-finances-publiques\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">added<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>DGFiP says the online tax portals used by individuals and businesses were not compromised, and neither were their usernames or passwords. The agency has also notified the CNIL, France\u2019s data protection authority.<\/p>\n<p>DGFiP has since put additional security measures in place, including preventive shutdowns of access to sensitive systems, and is working with the finance ministry\u2019s security office (SHFDS) and the national cybersecurity agency ANSSI.<\/p>\n<p>This breach is just the latest in a run of cybersecurity <a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpnetsecurity.com\/2026\/02\/19\/ficoba-data-breach-bank-accounts\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">incidents<\/a> that have impacted multiple French government agencies in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpnetsecurity.com\/2026\/04\/22\/france-titres-online-portal-data-breach\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recent months<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France\u2019s tax authority has disclosed a data breach after an attacker accessed the General Directorate of Public Finances&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6408,1816,5,1071],"class_list":["post-66255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-data-breach","tag-eu","tag-france","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}