French authorities have detained a 22-year-old suspect in connection with a massive data breach at the Interior Ministry. Hackers claim to have exfiltrated nearly 70 million confidential records, including police records and sensitive files on wanted persons. The ministry blamed the incident on “imprudence” and configuration errors.
Business Impact
This follows a DDoS attack on France’s national postal service earlier this week, indicating a concerted effort to destabilize French public infrastructure. The leak of police records poses a direct threat to national security and undercover operations, highlighting the catastrophic results of poor administrative security in high-stakes environments.
Why It Happened
Preliminary reports suggest the breach was made possible by an “inadvertent configuration change” in a cloud-facing portal, which allowed unauthenticated access to backend databases.
Recommended Executive Action
Review “Privileged Access Management” (PAM) for all government and critical infrastructure accounts. Ensure that “Configuration Drift” monitoring is in place to alert administrators the moment a secure database becomes internet-accessible.
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