French Interior Ministry confirms cyberattack on sensitive data

The French Interior Ministry has been hit by a cyberattack that compromised a lot of sensitive data,reports Reuters.

As reported,the Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed on Wednesday December 17,2025, that the incident was more serious than initially thought.

Nunez said on December 12 that there was no evidence to suggest the servers had been seriously compromised.

“It's serious,” Nunez told Franceinfo radio on Wednesday “A few days ago, I said that we didn't know whether there had been any compromises or not. Now we know that there have been compromises, but we don't know the extent of them."

Nunez informed that there was no indication about who carried out the attack, but the compromised files included criminal records.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez mentioned that France's Interior Ministry was targeted by a cyberattack several days ago that compromised email accounts and allowed hackers to access sensitive police files.

Nunez further informed that a judicial probe and administrative investigation were underway, and the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties CNIL has been notified about the attack.

"We were the target of a malicious intrusion a few days ago and a judicial investigation is under way "to find the perpetrator very quickly, said Nunez.

The intrusion occurred when attackers accessed "certain professional email inboxes" and "recovered access codes," the minister said.

The hackers "were able to consult a number of important files," including the Criminal Records Processing System (TAJ) and the Wanted Persons File (FPR), Nuñez said.

"I can tell you that there have not been millions of pieces of data extracted as of this morning...but I remain very cautious about the level of compromise,” he added.

The attack, which lasted "several days," targeted email accounts at the Place Beauvau ministry, which employs nearly 300,000 people, reports Euronews.