Leak at the French Office for Biodiversity

On 7 February 2026, the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) — the public agency that manages France's national hunting-licence ("permis de chasser") application — warned its users that a malicious act had given an attacker unauthorised access to personal data of licence candidates, applicants and holders. The incident came days after a separate intrusion at the Fédération Nationale des Chasseurs (FNC) around 20 January 2026, but the OFB attack hit a distinct system: the national application used to manage hunting-licence examinations and records.

The OFB confirmed that the compromised data concerned the identity and administrative file of licence holders. According to the agency, no health data, banking data or firearms-possession records were affected by this incident. Exposed categories reported include:

• Surname, birth name and first names
• Date and place (city) of birth
• Postal address, landline and mobile phone numbers
• Nationality and email address
• Hunting-licence number and details of the licence application, processing and examination (sitting dates, attendance, results)

The OFB has not published a precise number of affected individuals for this specific breach; France's hunting-licence population numbers in the low millions, and the related FNC incident was reported to involve roughly 1.4 million people. The exact overlap and scale of the OFB exposure remained unconfirmed.

In response, the OFB took the hunting-licence application offline to the public while it reinforced security, filed a complaint with the French national gendarmerie's cybercrime unit, and notified the data-protection regulator (CNIL) and the national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI). Affected users were urged to be vigilant against phishing and fraudulent communications that might exploit the leaked details.