A French government agency suffered a cyberattack that apparently resulted in the largest data breach incident ever to occur in the country, affecting up to 43 million victims.
The agency is called France Travail, the country's unemployment assistance and registration organization, which helps the unemployed find work and provides them with financial aid. The organization was created in 2008, after the merger of ANPE and ASSEDIC, and currently has approximately 45,000 employees.
In a press release issued earlier this week, the organization said it was the victim of a cyberattack in which sensitive data collected over the past 20 years was stolen. It warned citizens to be wary of potential identity theft attacks, phishing attempts and similar cyberattacks.
Unknown reasons
beepcomputer It says an estimated 43 million people were affected, making this the largest data breach incident in the country's history, surpassing February's 33 million attack on Viamedis and Almerys. The data stolen in this attack includes people's full names, dates of birth, places of birth, social security numbers, France Travail identifiers, email addresses, postal addresses and telephone numbers. No financial or payment data was stolen, he added.
The attack was detected in early March and lasted almost a month, the agency confirmed. In addition to the unemployed, hackers also stole data from job candidates.
France Travail did not say who the threat actors behind the incident are or what their objectives were. Therefore, we do not know if it was a ransomware attack or simply a data capture. No hacking collective has yet taken responsibility for the attack.
This is not the first time that France Travail has suffered a devastating cyberattack that caused a data breach. Last August, hackers stole sensitive information from 10 million people. That attack was attributed to the Cl0p ransomware collective, which abused the MOVEit Transfer software vulnerability to breach the system.
