The French government agency that handles the issuance and management of citizens’ identity documents, including national IDs, passports and immigration documents, confirmed on Wednesday that it had experienced a data breach.
in one AnnouncementThe Agence Nationale des Titres Securices (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach may have included citizens’ full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses and an unknown number of phone numbers. ANTS said it is investigating to determine how the breach occurred and what its impact was and that those whose data was affected are being notified.
ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests that some personal information of millions of people may have been stolen.
According to the bleeping computerA hacker has advertised stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database containing 19 million records. The hacker’s forum post referenced the same type of stolen information as outlined in ANTS’s announcement, and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.
