France Travail, the French national employment agency, discovered a cybersecurity breach affecting its employment portal — a platform frequently accessed by partner organizations. According to a public alert issued by the agency on July 22, this incident may have compromised the personal information of up to 340,000 jobseekers.

Exposed data reportedly includes names, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, unique France Travail identifiers, and jobseeker status. Fortunately, no passwords or financial information were impacted. However, the agency has urged users to stay alert for phishing attempts, a common follow-up tactic used in data breaches of this nature.

The breach was reportedly identified by France’s national cybersecurity agency CERT-FR (under ANSSI) on July 12. Initial findings suggest that attackers gained access through an infostealer malware infection on a user account tied to a training center in Isère. This account provided access to Kairos, an internal application used to monitor the training progress of jobseekers.

Following the detection, France Travail immediately shut down the compromised service, along with all associated partner services on the platform, as a precautionary measure. The affected services, including Kairos and the employment portal, are expected to resume operations on July 24.

In response, the agency filed a formal complaint with French law enforcement, notified the CNIL (the French data protection authority), and individually contacted impacted users. Additionally, France Travail has enhanced its cybersecurity protocols and fast-tracked the implementation of two-factor authentication (2FA) for Kairos — previously planned for October 2026.

This incident marks the second data breach for France Travail in just two years. In March 2024, the agency suffered a massive breach that compromised the data of up to 43 million users, dating back over two decades.

The latest breach reinforces the urgent need for advanced identity protection, better endpoint security, and proactive monitoring across public and private sector platforms to mitigate future threats.

Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/france-data-breach-jobseekers/