French passport-and-ID portal taken offline after cyber-attack, causing application backlog

The Interior Ministry confirmed late on 26 April that the Agence nationale des titres sécurisés (ANTS) has kept its ants.gouv.fr portal in emergency maintenance mode after a security breach discovered on 15 April exposed personal data linked to nearly 12 million user accounts. The site, which handles all online applications for French passports, national ID cards and driving licences—and underpins consular processing abroad—went dark at 19:30 CET on 24 April. During the outage, citizens and expatriate residents cannot submit new applications or track existing files. Only static information pages and FAQs remain accessible, and callers to the agency’s helpline report wait times exceeding 40 minutes. Town halls (mairies) have been instructed to revert to paper CERFA forms for urgent identity documents, a process that extends in-person visits by up to 30 minutes per applicant.



Meanwhile, travellers looking for alternative ways to keep plans on track can turn to VisaHQ, which offers step-by-step assistance with French travel documents and visa processing worldwide. The company’s online platform (https://www.visahq.com/france/) lets users check up-to-date requirements, arrange courier submissions and receive status notifications—providing a practical workaround while the ANTS portal remains offline.

French consulates worldwide face similar constraints, prompting some to postpone passport appointments until mid-May. Timing is awkward: demand for renewals typically spikes in late spring as travellers prepare for summer holidays, and many passports issued ahead of the 2024 Olympics are due to expire this year. Travel agencies warn of possible trip cancellations if documents cannot be issued before peak season. Employers relocating staff to or from France may encounter delays in securing the travel IDs needed for residence-permit validation and Social Security enrolment. Cyber-security experts say no highly sensitive biometric data were compromised, but names, email addresses and partial ID numbers were accessible for several hours before servers were isolated. ANTS has filed a breach notification with France’s data-protection authority CNIL and pledged to reopen “within days” once penetration tests are complete. Companies with large mobile workforces should advise employees to check passport validity well in advance and budget extra lead time for replacements. Once the portal reopens, ANTS says digitally stored fingerprints from applications lodged within the last 59 months will still be usable, avoiding the need for repeat biometrics. Nevertheless, the episode exposes the fragility of e-government platforms on which much of France’s immigration and travel-document infrastructure now relies.