French Tax Administration Suffers Major Data Breach Through Stolen Staff Credentials

An attacker used stolen passwords of staff at France's tax administration to steal tax data on hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and businesses during June and July. The data theft went undetected for seven weeks by both the tax administration and France's national cybersecurity agency ANSSI. According to ANSSI's report published on Tuesday, the attack was not sophisticated and succeeded due to weak security measures. Neither the tax administration nor ANSSI detected the data exfiltration as it occurred.