France Travail, France’s national employment agency, has reported a new breach of personal data affecting at least 340,000 people. The attackers accessed names, addresses, phone numbers and user IDs through its partner platform Kairos. This is the second major incident – last year the agency lost data on 43 million citizens.
France Travail sent a notification to the victims about the incident, explaining that the information was accessed through the Kairos platform, which is used to monitor the training and activity of job seekers.
According to the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI, the hack resulted in the following data being accessed by hackers:
full name
postal address
phone number
France Travail user ID
Although no financial data was compromised, there is a risk of identity theft, phishing or the creation of fraudulent accounts. France Travail urged users to be particularly careful with suspicious emails and job offers.
France Travail has already been involved in one of the largest leaks in French history – in March 2024, the data of 43 million people was exposed, which is more than two-thirds of the country’s population.
France has also been under active attack by cybercriminals recently. In July, hackers announced the theft of classified data from Naval Group, the main shipbuilding contractor for the Ministry of Defense. In May, the Stormous group released an archive that allegedly contained leaks from high-level government systems.
The France Travail incident once again confirms the vulnerability of government digital services even in countries with high data protection standards. The repeated leak is a wake-up call that requires not just technical but also strategic changes in approaches to storing and processing personal information. While France Travail assures that there are no financial losses, the main threat is phishing attacks and ID fraud against vulnerable citizens, in particular the unemployed.
