The French government agency responsible for issuing and managing national identity documents, such as national IDs, passports and immigration documents, acknowledged on Wednesday that a data breach had occurred.
The Agency for National Power and Security (ANTS) said in a statement that the data stolen in the breach may include non-public names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of citizens. ANTS said an investigation is underway to determine how the breach occurred and its impact, and those whose data was affected have been notified.
ANTS said it detected the attack on April 15, but did not say how many people were affected by the breach. However, some reports suggest that millions of people may have had some of their personal information stolen.
According to Bleeping Computer, the hackers claimed to have a database containing 19 million records and promoted the stolen data on hacking forums. The hacker's forum post references the same type of theft information mentioned in the ANTS announcement and was published before ANTS announced the breach on April 20th.