Gun owners' personal data hacked in cyberattack of French government site
Thousands of gun owners may have had their personal information stolen
Hunters in France have been targeted in a number of recent cyberattacks
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The personal data of potentially thousands of French gun owners has been stolen following the cyber attack of a government website.
The Interior Ministry confirmed to The Connexion that it had recently detected “unauthorized access, through a malicious action,” to an account belonging to a company using the Système d’information sur les armes (SIA), the government database where gun-owners must register their weapons.
The breach resulted in “the extraction of commercial data contained in that account, some of which may include personal data of firearm owners as well as data relating to firearm transactions,” the ministry said.
The Interior Ministry said it had reported the matter to the Paris Public Prosecutor, “with a view to opening an investigation.”
The SIA is France’s official digital firearms registry, providing a centralized database where legal firearm owners in France are required to register their weapons. It also tracks purchases, sales, and transfers of guns.
Data stolen for ‘over 60,000 guns’
Although no figures have been released regarding how many gun-owners were affected by the hack, the website French Breaches, which tracks data breaches throughout France, said that an anonymous hacker claimed to be selling data from the breach relating to more than 60,000 firearms registered on the SIA platform.
Following the cyberattack, “all affected firearm owners have been contacted individually” to inform them of the breach, the Interior Ministry said.
The ministry said too that the company account used in the breach had been deactivated and that, as of April 1, a two-factor authentication system had been introduced on the site.
This means that anyone trying to gain access to the platform must first enter a code received via SMS or email, as well as entering their username and password.
It said that although “access to a third-party user account was possible, the firearms information system itself was not compromised.”
“Technical teams are continuing their investigations in order to determine the exact origin of the incident,” the ministry said.
Other recent cyberattacks
This is not the first breach of personal data belonging to gun-owners in France.
Last year, the French Shooting Federation (FFTir) suffered a cyberattack which saw the theft of personal information relating to its members, including names, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses.
A similar attack took place this January targeting France’s National Federation of Hunters (FNC).
French media outlet BFMTV reported that following the French Shooting Federation hack some federation members claimed they had been burglared, assaulted, or in some cases even visited by individuals posing as police officers who said they had come for their weapons.
The Interior Ministry cautioned gun-owners who were using the SIA to adhere to “basic cybersecurity practices,” including changing passwords regularly, never sharing login details or passwords, and, in the case of professional users, ensuring each employee has and uses their own login credentials.
