Threat Intelligence

Former head of DGSE confirmed French campaigns against internat’l targets

France's former head of external intelligence service this summer confirmed a French cyber campaign that targeted Iran, Canada, Spain, Greece, Norway, and other nations. 

The incidents had been widely reported but were never confirmed by French officials, that is until Bernard Barbier, former head of the French General Board of External Security (DGSE), spoke at French engineering university CentraleSupélec and his recorded comments posted on YouTube and later published in the French newspaper Le Monde.

Barbier also told students at the event that he discovered the NSA had probed computers at the Elysée Palace, the official residence of the French president.He also discussed the surveillance malware ‘Babar,' which was previously reported to have been used in espionage campaigns by the French government. In 2014, Barbier joined Sogeti, a Paris-based subsidiary of the technology consulting firm Capgemini Group as a special advisor of cyber security.

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