France’s Employment Agency has suffered a data breach in its systems that could result in the leak or exploit of personal details of around 43 million potential users.
France Travail, the French national employment agency, is responsible for registering unemployed individuals, providing financial aid, and assisting them in finding jobs.
The agency announced that its IT systems and those of Cap Emploi, a government employment service that supports people with disabilities, were breached.
According to France Travail, the hackers stole details belonging to job seekers registered with the agency in the last 20 years. The exposed personal data includes names, social security numbers, birthdates, user IDs, email and postal addresses, and phone numbers of France Travail and Cap Emploi users.
However, login credentials, passwords and bank details are not at risk, the agency confirmed in a public statement.
The incident does not affect allowance payments, and users can still connect to their France Travail account. But, the agency advised its users to be vigilant when receiving a message pretending to be from its services.
France Travail has notified France’s data watchdog, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), and filed a complaint with the police.
The French police have opened an investigation and released an online complaint form for people whose data may have been exposed.
The CNIL also opened an investigation to determine whether sufficient data security measures were in place in compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
According to the French government, the threat actor gained unauthorized access to Cap Emploi’s systems around February 6.
Last August, France Travail suffered a massive data breach, which impacted approximately 10 million individuals. It was indirectly attributed to the Clop ransomware group breaching the agency’s systems by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer software tool.
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