Chinese spies using fake LinkedIn profiles have fooled "hundreds" of France’s top civil servants and executives, whose awareness of the threat is “totally insufficient” compared to Britain, the country’s intelligence agencies have warned.

The alert over an “unprecedented threat to national interests” follows similar warnings that hostile foreign powers were using the popular online CV website to tap sensitive information from America, Germany and Britain.

According to a note leaked to Le Figaro newspaper by the DGSI and DGSE, the Gallic equivalent of MI5 and MI6, French businesses and state administration have been guilty of “culpable naivety” over the foreign spy threat via the popular online CV website despite clear warnings from UK intelligence as early as 2015.

Some 4,000 individuals have been targetted in recent months and “hundreds” have been bamboozled by offers of jobs or collaboration from fake LinkedIn accounts run by Chinese spies masquerading as “head hunters, consultants or think tanks”.

One cited by Le Figaro as agreeing to a free diving holiday in Southeast Asia while another agreed to write up short reports based on confidential information in exchange for payment.

“Contrary to what one can see notably among our English neighbours, (French awareness of online espionage) is indeed totally insufficient both among our top executives and political elites,” one agent told Le Figaro, adding that the threat had “changed paradigm since 2017” and from now on “we will respond to attacks blow for blow, whatever the consequences”.