France's tax agency got hacked: how did it come to this?
France's tax agency got hacked (in French)
In mid-August 2026, France's tax agency (DGFiP) confirmed a major data breach exposing personal and financial information of 678,000 individuals and businesses. The attacker accessed the system via a compromised VPN account, and the data was sold on the darknet before the breach was detected. This incident follows a pattern of repeated cyberattacks on French state services, raising questions about systemic security weaknesses, delayed detection, and the adequacy of France's cybersecurity strategy. The article analyzes the technical and organizational failures, compares with a landmark EU court ruling on state liability from a Bulgarian case, and calls for a renewed focus on technical expertise over bureaucratic compliance.
The problem is not that an attacker can get into a system, that will always happen; the problem is that a compromise takes so long to be detected and gives access to far too many things.
- ChrisArchitect
Previously (in english): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49298303
- idoubtit
The post is verbose, but lacks substance:
- The last two sections (≈20% of the article, 5.Cloud and 6.IA) are barely relevant.
- Some comparisons are questionable. It claims that, since some taxes data was compromised, the trust in the national Federated Identity is eroded "as if Facebook Connect was hacked". That's strange, I think it should be "as the trust in Facebook Connect would be eroded when Facebook is hacked". Anyway, I think most people won't care.
- Some sentences make no sense: "Le piratage de Ficoba semble en être l'exemple type"... But "Ficoba" is not mentioned anywhere, and, though I know what the word means, I can't guess what the sentence points to.
The OP should have mentioned another important hack of French national structures that happened in december 2025 and which is well documented. IIRC, through phishing, a keylogger was installed on a teacher's computer. Then the hackers got credentials to an internal training platform for teachers. Then they exploited multiple security breaches and connections between Ministries to get access to the national police files.
- ninjagoo
After 3-4 decades of networked compute, is it now fair to say that 'there are two types of organizations in the world: those that have been hacked, and those that know that they have been hacked.'
- penr0se
"got hacked (in French)".
Got hacqued.
- dmbche
"Ce scénario n'est pas théorique, il a déjà eu lieu. En octobre 2025, la Fédération française de tir se fait voler les données de près d'un million de licenciés et d'anciens licenciés : état civil, adresse postale, téléphone, numéro de licence.
Les mois suivants, des individus se présentent au domicile de licenciés en se faisant passer pour des policiers ou des gendarmes, parfois en tenue, pour se faire remettre des armes. Des vols sont constatés à Nice, à Paris, à Limoges, à Décines."
Sounds like a far fetched movie!