Hacking of the tax administration: Sébastien Lecornu convenes a crisis unit

Crisis meeting. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu convened for Monday an interministerial crisis unit (CIC) on large-scale computer hacking targeting the tax administration, which he will chair by “secure videoconference”, Matignon announced on Sunday.

This meeting of officials from the ministries concerned will aim, among other things, to prepare information for the 678,000 individuals or companies who are victims of access to their data which is due to begin on Monday, it was specified. This meeting will be held in the afternoon at the end of the trip that Sébastien Lecornu and several ministers are to make to Gironde, hit this summer by fires of historic scale.

The tax administration recognized this intrusion into its systems on Friday and revealed that some 700,000 individuals and professionals had been victims, according to the General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP). The Prime Minister's services recalled on Sunday the “constant doctrine” for this type of incident: “detect and interrupt, pursue, inform, reinforce”.

“The incident revealed this week was the subject of a complaint and a judicial investigation is underway. A notification was sent to the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Freedom, editor's note), and the users concerned will be contacted individually from Monday August 17, with details of the data likely to have been exposed and the vigilance measures to be adopted,” they continued.

The CIC meeting on Monday should ensure that “this notification is fully ready before it is triggered,” they added. The Paris prosecutor's office also announced on Saturday the opening of an investigation for “fraudulent extraction of data” and “criminal association”.

This meeting should also provide an opportunity to take stock of the implementation of an administration security plan, launched on April 30, and which is based around a “new digital governance of the State” and a strengthening of resources. Several political leaders have expressed their concern about this hacking. Socialist senators requested a parliamentary commission of inquiry on Sunday, noting a succession of incidents which does not allow “at this stage to conclude a structural failure” but encourages verification of the existence of “common vulnerabilities”.

Presidential candidate for the right-wing Les Républicains party, Bruno Retailleau, for his part, regretted on X that France is “the 2nd country in the world most affected by cyberattacks”. “We must take stock of this threat, I want to put in place a Vauban Plan to build a real digital fortress and finally protect the data of the French,” he wrote on Sunday. The CIC format is the one that Sébastien Lecornu favored during the summer for the coordination of heatwave and fire management.