Cybersecurity and Anti-Piracy: 2025 in Review
Did 2025 really mark a decline in digital piracy, as some institutional reports suggest, or are we rather witnessing a deep reshaping of threats, more automated, more industrialized and often less visible?
While Europe, and France in particular, drew media attention because of spectacular data leaks, the dynamics observed in 2025 go well beyond that geographic frame. They concern environments where global platforms, cultural industries, cloud services and structuring legal frameworks interact constantly.
This 2025 anti-piracy and cybersecurity review takes that global perspective. The French examples serve as revealing cases, but the analysis aims above all to shed light on systemic trends specific to a largely globalized digital space.
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Data Leaks: France as a Textbook Case
2025 marked a decisive turning point for French cybersecurity. According to consolidated data for the first half of the year, nearly 1.8 million accounts were compromised between January and June, placing France at the top of the European countries most affected by data leaks. This trend translated into a series of major incidents, affecting both private operators and public institutions.
Health Data and Trusted Providers: The Viamedis and Almerys Case
In February 2025, the third-party payment operators Viamedis and Almerys suffered an intrusion of exceptional scale. More than 33 million people had their data exposed, including social security numbers, civil status records and health insurance information.
This attack revealed the structural vulnerability of intermediary providers, often regarded as secondary technical players, but which in reality hold considerable volumes of sensitive data. The healthcare sector, already under latent strain, confirmed itself as a prime target for cybercriminals.
Telecoms Under Pressure: Free Mobile and Bouygues Telecom
Revealed in 2025 but initiated in late 2024, the Free Mobile compromise remains one of the most significant incidents of the year. Nearly 19.2 million subscribers were affected. 5.1 million IBANs were stolen. The arrest of a 17-year-old in January underlined another worrying reality: ever earlier access to advanced technical capabilities.
A few months later, Bouygues Telecom in turn confirmed unauthorized access to the data of 6.4 million customers. Contact details, contractual information and banking data were among the compromised items. This incident reminds us that massive investment in cybersecurity is not always enough to neutralize systemic weaknesses.
Public Services: France Travail and the Ministry of Sports
France Travail, the national employment agency, was a recurring target for hackers in 2025. Three major attacks marked the year: the exposure of 340,000 job seekers through the Kairos application in July, the hacking of 31,000 accounts claimed by the Stormous group in the fall, then a data leak affecting 1.6 million young people through the Missions Locales in December.
At the same time, the Ministry of Sports was hit at the end of the year by an attack affecting nearly 3.5 million households through the Pass’Sport program. These incidents underscore the obsolescence of some public information systems and the complexity of coordinating across heterogeneous platforms.
Small Businesses: Still a Prime Target
Worldwide, in general, small and medium-sized businesses are a prime target for cybercriminals, because of limited resources, increased dependence on digital services and growing exposure to digital supply chains.
The 2025 barometer from Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr paints a paradoxical picture. French small businesses show a better perception of the risks, but overwhelmingly acknowledge that they are unable to cope with them.
- 44% of executives now consider their company highly exposed to digital threats
- 58% rate their level of security as satisfactory
- Yet 80% admit they are not ready in the event of a cyberattack.
The companies surveyed have on average 4.06 protection solutions, with notable progress in password management policies, credential managers and two-factor authentication. Phishing remains the main attack vector, accounting for 43% of reported incidents.
Despite an increase in IT budgets for nearly one company in five, investment remains low: three quarters of organizations spend less than 2,000 euros a year on their cybersecurity. The lack of skills, time and financial resources keeps piling up, while 28% of executives now consider cybersecurity a non-priority.
Beyond the figures, this situation reveals a more structural problem: cybersecurity is still seen by many SMEs as a technical or regulatory constraint, not as a business continuity issue. Obligations, where they exist, are often seen as abstract or remote from day-to-day operations. This perception partly explains why investment favours visible tools over processes, governance or team training, which are nonetheless decisive in preventing incidents.
Major International Trends of 2025
- Automation of the fight against piracy
Cloudflare’s transparency report highlights a spectacular rise in copyright-related takedown actions. Opening APIs to rights holders enabled faster targeting of illegal sports streaming, leading to the shutdown of more than 20,000 storage accounts in six months.
- Archives, AI and legal conflicts
The Internet Archive found itself forced to block access to certain works in Belgium, under threat of a 500,000-euro fine. This case illustrates the extension of anti-piracy mechanisms to complex legal conflicts mixing access to knowledge and copyright.
AI-related litigation has also multiplied. Meta faces growing challenges over its use of pirated archives to train its models, while publishers are obtaining blocking orders against automated republishing platforms.
- IPTV, DRM and new distribution vectors
In Northern Europe, consumption of pirate IPTV remains high despite a slight decline in Sweden. In Norway, public debate points to the cost of legal subscriptions as an aggravating factor.
On the technical side, the flaws detected in PlayReady DRM triggered rapid reactions from Microsoft and Amazon, demonstrating how central protection technologies are to the streaming economy.
- Targeted enforcement and distribution platforms
Criminal convictions, such as that of a former Memphis employee sentenced to 57 months in prison for stealing physical media, coexist with actions targeting digital tools, like SpotifyDL or the Telegram and Discord platforms identified by the RIAA.
These actions illustrate a clear shift in anti-piracy strategies. The emphasis is no longer only on large, visible sites, but on infrastructure, technical intermediaries and the distribution channels that make piracy smooth and accessible. Browser extensions, bots, community spaces and storage services are becoming preferred friction points, because neutralizing them directly disrupts usage without requiring mass blocking.
This more granular approach comes with growing automation of detection and takedown measures. While it brings considerable efficiency gains, it also raises recurring questions about false positives, the transparency of decisions and the ability of legitimate users to challenge wrongful removals.
2025 confirms a now well-established reality: the threat does not go away, it transforms. Attacks are becoming more automated, pirate usage more fragmented, and institutional responses faster but also more contested. The challenge in the years ahead will not only be to block or sanction, but to anticipate. Anticipate usage, anticipate technological misuse, anticipate regulatory blind spots. Cybersecurity and anti-piracy are no longer a matter of defensive logic: they are now structuring levers of trust, competitiveness and digital sovereignty. Join us in February for our new theme. In the meantime, if you have a film, a series, software or an ebook to protect, don’t hesitate to call on our services by contacting one of our account managers; PDN has been a pioneer in cybersecurity and anti-piracy for more than ten years, and we are bound to have a solution to help you. Happy reading, and see you soon!
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