Hackers breached the French tax authority and sold information on hundreds of thousands of citizens
The French tax authority's database was breached, and information on approximately 678,000 citizens is now being offered on the darknet. In addition to the harm to taxpayers, this is an embarrassing incident for a country that promised technological leadership.
Hundreds of thousands of French citizens are currently waiting for an official notification from the authorities to update them if they were included in a cyber breach that has been shaking the country in recent days.
Hackers managed to breach the servers of the French government tax office and steal records of nearly 700,000 taxpayers. The stolen information includes identification details such as address, date of birth, and tax number, but also income levels, personal status for tax purposes, and more. The authorities are supposed to update the victims in the coming days, but the fear is that the information has already been sold and distributed.
The affair was exposed in recent days after the unit responsible for cybercrime in the French police, known as OFAC, announced that it had opened an investigation into a breach of the French tax authority's information system. In the breach, records of approximately 678,000 taxpayers, private individuals and companies, were stolen. In several hundred cases, correspondence between taxpayers and tax authorities was also stolen. In addition, 200,000 records of land tax payments by companies and individuals were stolen. In the cases of private taxpayers, the stolen information included the tax bracket and taxable income.
Government failure
Initially, the authorities focused on warning the public that if they receive inquiries containing the mentioned information from impostors posing as tax authorities, who try to collect information such as bank accounts or make payments over the phone, they should disconnect and report to the authorities.
But in the last day, the massive breach of a government authority, which puts hundreds of thousands of French citizens in financial danger, has turned into a civil and political story. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu convened an emergency meeting on the subject on Monday, and the responsible minister, David Amiel, held a press conference where he offered a "sincere apology" to all the victims of the breach.
"What happened is inconceivable for the victims, we understand the anger on the subject," he said. According to him, the government "will not sweep the affair under the rug," and he promised to demonstrate "full transparency" to the citizens regarding the private information that was stolen. In practice, Amiel admitted that digital services for French citizens are not properly secured and promised to use artificial intelligence (AI) to improve them.
The statements did not do much to improve the government's standing in the affair, wrote the newspaper "Le Monde" this morning. "In a country where people are reluctant to disclose their income, and where the secrecy of tax payments is presented by the state itself as a sacred cow against any demand for transparency, this affair seems particularly serious," the newspaper wrote in an editorial, which determined that it undermines the willingness and desire of residents to pay taxes at all.
Hacker group claims responsibility
Meanwhile, a hacker group called Zerobytes took responsibility for the breach, and for other breaches that occurred in recent months, including the French Ministry of Education, which included the theft of information on millions of students and tens of thousands of teachers. In an anonymous interview with the French news agency, the group reported that it had already sold the taxpayer database "for a few thousand euros" to "several clients." In the past, the group breached the Intermarché supermarket chain and the French Volleyball Federation.
Beyond the theft of information, which is causing outrage among the French public, the fact that the breach of the tax authority took place as early as June and July, and was conducted under the radar for entire months, is fueling the flames. Thus, only the taking of responsibility by the hacker group and the offering of the database for sale on August 12 brought the authorities to discover the breach. Meanwhile, the breach has been closed.
The opposition sent a joint letter to the government this week in which it demands a "transparent and reliable investigation" of the various affairs. "This was our last fortress, the corridors of power themselves, the tax authority, and we were told that the defenses of our systems are stable - and now it too has fallen," was written in the economic newspaper "Les Échos". French President Emmanuel Macron has boasted in the past about the French high-tech industry, also in the field of AI, and the current affair is embarrassing France not only in the local arena, but also in the international one.
