What Happened
In late January 2026, a data breach involving the French government’s Ficoba database—accessible via gouv.fr domains for inter-ministerial exchanges—occurred when hackers compromised a single civil servant’s credentials to impersonate an official and access records on approximately 1.2 million French bank accounts. The exposed data included personal information such as account holders’ names, addresses, IBANs, and in some cases tax numbers, but not account balances or transaction details. French Public Finances Directorate teams immediately restricted access upon detection, limited the breach scope, notified the CNIL data protection authority, and planned to contact affected individuals, amid warnings of ensuing phishing scams exploiting the leaked personally identifiable information (PII). No direct “gouv.fr” domain breach is documented for 2026 beyond this Ficoba incident and unrelated ministry compromises like agriculture.gouv.fr.