France's Finance Ministry has confirmed that attackers broke into the systems of its tax administration, the DGFiP, and extracted data on individuals and businesses. The intrusion occurred in June; outside estimates put the number of affected taxpayers at close to 700,000, while the ministry cited around 678,000 on Friday as investigations continue.
Tax agencies are among the most sensitive targets that exist: their records combine identity, financial, employment, property and business information. Even without passwords or payment credentials, such files are valuable for identity theft, targeted phishing and fraud — and unlike a compromised password, they cannot simply be replaced.
French authorities said affected citizens would be individually notified. The incident joins a growing series of attacks on government data systems and underscores that protecting such databases is a long-term identity-security challenge, not a one-off incident-response problem.
