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FR Ministry of Agriculture

Claimed by Lapsus$ · listed 5 months ago

4m
Age
since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

  1. ListedMar 1, 2026
  2. Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group
Lapsus$
Status
Data leaked
Country
France
Sector
Public Sector
Listed on leak site
Mar 1, 2026

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

The French Ministry of Agriculture (Ministère de l'Agriculture et de la Souveraineté alimentaire) is a central government body responsible for developing and implementing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, food safety, and rural development policy in France. It oversees regulatory frameworks for farming, animal welfare, and agri-food markets, and funds research and agricultural education. The ministry operates at national scale with thousands of civil servants across metropolitan France and overseas territories.

Industry
Government – Agriculture & Food Policy
Address
78 rue de Varenne, 75349 Paris SP 07, France
Employees
10000+
Founded
1881

Attack summary

Severity: critical — The victim is a national government ministry; confirmed data publication by Lapsus$ implies exfiltration of sensitive public-sector data that likely includes PII of civil servants, confidential policy documents, and potentially regulated information, meeting the threshold for critical severity.

Lapsus$ claims to have published data obtained from the French Ministry of Agriculture; the post is marked 'data_published', indicating exfiltration and public release of files rather than encryption alone. No ransom amount or specific data volume was stated in the post.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post
  • Government administrative documents
  • Internal communications
  • Personnel records
  • Policy and regulatory files

Original description

AI-summarised, not from the leak post

The FR Ministry of Agriculture, or the French Ministry of Agriculture, is a governmental body in France overseeing agriculture, forestry, and food processing. It develops policies to support farming and rural development, ensures food quality and safety, and handles fisheries and animal welfare. The ministry also plays crucial roles in research, education, and regulation of agricultural and food markets in France.

Source

Indexed 5 months ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About lapsus$

Lapsus$ is a financially motivated cybercriminal group that emerged in December 2021, gaining notoriety for their aggressive extortion tactics and high-profile targeting of major corporations and government entities. The group is believed to have originated from South America, particularly Brazil, with suspected ties to young hackers operating independently rather than as a traditional ransomware-as-a-service operation, though they have demonstrated sophisticated coordination and insider recruitment capabilities. Lapsus$ primarily relies on social engineering techniques, SIM swapping, and insider threats to gain initial access to target networks, often recruiting employees through bribes or coercion rather than relying on traditional malware delivery methods, and they frequently employ data theft and public leak tactics for extortion rather than always deploying encryption-based ransomware. The group has conducted notable attacks against major technology companies including Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, and Okta, as well as targeting organizations across France, the United States, Brazil, Germany, and Canada, with a particular focus on consumer services, education, government facilities, and critical manufacturing sectors, leading to significant law enforcement attention and arrests of suspected members. Following arrests of key members by Brazilian and UK authorities in 2022, the group's activity has significantly diminished, though some security researchers suggest remnants may still be operational under different identities. The group has been linked to 27 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 10, 2021; most recent post June 23, 2026. The operation is currently active.

Timeline of this disclosure

  • March 1, 2026FR Ministry of Agriculture listed by lapsus$on the group's public leak site

Other recent disclosures by lapsus$

lapsus$ has been linked to 27 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full lapsus$ dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Public Sector sector, which has 466 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, FR Ministry of Agriculture is reported in France, a country with 612 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by lapsus$ means FR Ministry of Agriculture appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

  • Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
  • Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
  • Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
  • Report the incident to your national CERT, CERT-FR (France), as required for your jurisdiction.
  • Monitor for the data appearing on lapsus$'s leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.