The French national employment agency, Pôle emploi, faces a significant data breach, exposing sensitive information of potentially 10 million people. The breach is suspected to be linked to the Cl0p ransomware gang’s MOVEit campaign, which has impacted nearly 59 million individuals across 977 organizations.
Emsisoft, an anti-virus software company, has identified Pôle emploi as the second-largest victim of this supply chain attack. The breach is believed to have compromised names, employment statuses, and social security numbers of six million recent registrants and four million individuals who were off the registry for less than a year.
Pôle emploi released a public statement confirming the breach in its service provider’s information system, specifically implicating Majorel, one of the agency’s data processing contractors.
While this breach echoes previous attacks involving the MOVEit hack through Majorel, the agency emphasizes that the security of its core information systems remains unaffected, and welfare payments will proceed as usual. The breach, however, has not impacted jobseekers’ email addresses, phone numbers, passwords, or bank details, according to the agency’s confirmation.
French security researcher Clément Domingo noted that there is no indication of leaked data on the dark web as of now. Investigations are ongoing to identify the origin of the breach, and Pôle emploi has taken swift action by reporting the incident to France’s data protection watchdog (CNIL) and intends to lodge a formal complaint with judicial authorities.
The agency has expressed its commitment to mitigating the impact and ensuring the affected individuals are informed individually through email. To address concerns, Pôle emploi has also set up a toll-free phone number for job seekers’ inquiries.
