Security News > 2024 > March > Record breach of French government exposes up to 43 million people's data

A French government department - responsible for registering and assisting unemployed people - is the latest victim of a mega data breach that compromised the information of up to 43 million citizens.

"The database allegedly extracted illicitly contains the personal identification data of people currently registered, people previously registered over the last 20 years as well as people not registered on the list of job seekers but having a candidate space on francetravail.fr," the statement reads, which was translated electronically from French.

"It is therefore potentially the personal data of 43 million people which have been exfiltrated."

In August last year, it was caught up in an incident at a service provider that also compromised the data of an estimasted 10 million French citizens.

Data breaches at Viamedis and Almerys, two third-party payment providers for healthcare and insurance companies, led to more than 33 million people's data being compromised.

Affecting more people and including more data points than the breaches of Viamedis and Almerys, the France Travail attack will, for now, be known as the country's worst-ever data breach.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/mega_data_breach_at_french/