France Confirms Data Breach At Government Agency That Manages Citizens' IDs

Source: Slashdot

Background

An anonymous reader quoted a report from TechCrunch stating that the French government agency responsible for issuing and managing citizens’ identity documents—including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents—confirmed a data breach on Wednesday.

Details of the breach

• The agency, Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés (ANTS), announced the incident in an official statement.
• Stolen data may include:
  • Full names
  • Dates and places of birth
  • Mailing and email addresses
  • Phone numbers

ANTS detected the attack on April 15 and is conducting an ongoing investigation to determine how the breach occurred and its overall impact. Affected individuals are being notified.

Potential impact

• The agency has not disclosed the exact number of affected citizens.
• Some reports suggest that millions could be impacted.
• According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to possess a database containing 19 million records. The forum post referenced the same types of information listed in ANTS’ announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

References

• TechCrunch article on the breach
• ANTS official security incident announcement
• Bleeping Computer report on the hacker’s claim