According to a CCTV News report today, France’s Directorate General of Public Finance, which is responsible for tax administration, has recently suffered repeated cyberattacks resulting in extensive data breaches. David Amiel, Minister Delegate for Public Functions and State Reform under the Ministry of Action and Public Accounts, said on the 18th that artificial intelligence (AI) tools would be introduced to detect cybersecurity vulnerabilities in government departments.
Amiel said the French government would hire a domestic artificial intelligence provider to complete the task, such as the French company Mistral AI.
The French government announced on the 14th that the Directorate General of Public Finance had suffered two cyberattacks in June and July this year. The June attack reportedly exposed the information of approximately 700,000 taxpayers, while the July attack involved detailed information on approximately 200,000 land registry accounts. The Directorate General of Public Finance said it discovered another data breach on the 17th of this month, with the related losses still being assessed.
In February this year, France’s Ministry of Economy and Finance announced that the national database of French bank accounts had been illegally accessed since the end of January. The database covers approximately 1.2 million accounts. The Directorate General of Public Finance, which manages the database, has taken measures to block the attack and repair the system.
In response to the frequent cyberattacks targeting government agencies, French Prime Minister Lecornu asked relevant authorities on the 18th of this month to accelerate the implementation of measures and strengthen the security of government information systems.
Mistral AI was founded in April 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix, three researchers who studied at École Polytechnique in Paris and worked at Google DeepMind and Meta. Headquartered in Paris, it is regarded as one of the most representative companies in Europe’s AI sector. In July 2026, Microsoft and Mistral reached a cooperation agreement and invested billions of dollars to build its computing infrastructure in Europe, providing regulated industries such as finance and government with an alternative that does not rely on infrastructure controlled by the United States.
Regarding the cyberattacks in June and July, ITHome previously reported that hackers used stolen employee accounts and authorized third-party accounts to access the information systems of France’s Directorate General of Public Finance. The leaked information included customers’ reference tax income, family quotient, withholding tax rates, company names / SIREN business registration numbers, and customers’ property addresses / areas. However, login credentials such as customer usernames and passwords were not exposed. France’s Directorate General of Public Finance has reported the incident to the French data protection authority CNIL and plans to notify affected customers by email or postal letter.
France’s choice of domestic AI provider Mistral to detect cybersecurity vulnerabilities reflects Europe’s long-term efforts to promote “AI sovereignty.” ITHome previously reported that Europe’s trend of reducing its reliance on U.S. technology and securing autonomy over the digital economy has continued for several years. The French government hopes to use this initiative to protect national information security while reducing its dependence on external technologies.