Cyber attack on French tax body reveals a new enemy

Hardened targets are being breached by cyber criminals. Whether this is the result of an escalation or a fluke remains to be seen, writes Jason Walsh

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France’s tax authority, the Directorate-General for Public Finances (DGFiP) has been hacked, resulting in a data breach affecting a reported over half a million individuals and businesses.

The attack occurred in June and was confirmed by authorities on 15 August following a posting to a cybercrime forum by the alleged perpetrator calling himself ‘ZeroBytes’. Data was “view[ed] and extract[ed]” relating to some 680,000 individuals and companies. 

A second attack hit the land registry in August, France 24 has reported.

The DGFiP breach is the latest in a list of attacks against public sector agencies across Europe, including one that forced France’s national document service offline for part of the summer, a breach at the European Commission, numerous attacks in Spain and more.

French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has taken charge of the response, announcing an increase in resources for cyber security.

Of course, any computer system can be hacked, but what is striking about this attack is that tax authorities, including in France, tend to be better secured than the average agencies. After all, like banks, a lot is at stake and, indeed, many cyber attacks that we hear about these days go for lower value targets.

Whether or not this is changing with attackers moving up the food chain is not at all clear, but it is, unsurprisingly, causing some worry. A report in newspaper Le Monde (readable here in English) reports opposition Socialist party senator Patrick Kanner said that the breach “does not, for now, point to a structural failure”.

However, he also said: “The events since the beginning of 2026 reveal a series of incidents that now justify Parliament having an overall view”. Kanner’s party and senate colleague Thierry Cozic, meanwhile, said the breach “looks like the most serious cyberattack in our country’s history”. Bruno Retailleau of the centre-right Republican party, meanwhile, said: “France is the second most targeted country for cyberattacks in the world”.

If so-called ‘hardened’, high-value targets that normally deter casual attackers are now being breached it suggests that, even without the much-ballyhooed future threat of quantum computers smashing every digital lock in the world, attackers may be growing in competence and nerve.

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