France’s Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés, or ANTS, handles the issuance of passports, national ID cards, driver’s licenses, and residence permits. On April 15, 2026, it detected a security incident on its portal, ants.gouv.fr. Five days later, the agency went public. A hacker had already beaten them to it, advertising a cache of 19 million records on underground forums. Stolen data includes full names. Dates and places of birth. Mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers. Account identifiers from personal and professional profiles. ANTS insists administrative attachments and uploaded scans remain safe. But that’s cold comfort. This haul primes the pump for identity theft, phishing, and worse. The breach surfaced first through hacker chatter. Before ANTS’s April 20 announcement, the actor posted samples matching the agency’s user base. TechCrunch broke the story, citing ANTS’s official notice at ants.gouv.fr . BleepingComputer confirmed the forum sale, noting the post predated official word.…