Pôle emploi, a national employment agency in France, has experienced a cyberattack that could potentially expose the critical data of about 10 million individuals.
Multiple researchers have attributed the attack on the French entity to the Cl0p ransomware’s MOVEit campaign. Moreover, an AV software company has already listed the attack as linked to MOVEit and claimed that the French agency is one of the most prominent victims of the supply chain attack.
Initial investigation showed that the incident had compromised information, such as names, employment status, and social security numbers, of nearly six million people who registered with the agency last year and four million who had been off the register for less than a year at the time of the campaign.
Pôle emploi admitted that the breach could expose the identity of jobseekers.
According to a public statement earlier this week, Pôle emploi confirmed that one of their service providers suffered a breach, resulting in jobseekers’ identities and data exposure.
The French agency stated that the IT systems of Majorel, one of their two digitalisation and jobseekers’ information processing contractors, suffered a compromise.
This French entity will join the long list of Cl0p’s victims once the investigation verifies that it suffered from the MOVEit hack. In a related incident, Bramer insurer and another German media outlet have also sustained a compromise through Majorel Germany.
Pôle emploi explained that the security of its data system remains unexposed, and welfare payments will continue its standard operations. The French agency also assured everyone that the data breach incident would not affect the jobseekers’ email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, and banking information.
Researchers have yet to find evidence of misused data from the exposed information. Further investigations will start once the organisation verifies the incident’s origin.
Pôle emploi stated that they understand the risk of the event, so they are using every precautionary method and response plan to mitigate the attack’s impact. They have established a toll-free phone number for job seekers to inquire about the event and disseminate notification letters to all impacted individuals.
