Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France’s local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, the head of France’s disinformation detection service Viginum said on Thursday.
A joint investigation by the French daily Libération and Haaretz, which analyzed BlackCore’s digital footprint, uncovered a toolkit of influence-operation systems routed through servers in Britain, Germany, Finland and Lithuania.
French authorities identified BlackCore – a self-described Israeli “elite influence, cyber and technology” firm – as the suspected operator behind a disinformation campaign targeting left-wing candidates in France’s 2026 municipal elections.
BlackCore is now the subject of two investigations in France – one by Paris prosecutors and another by the domestic intelligence agency, which is probing who may have commissioned the campaign.
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BlackCore’s systems appear to have shared web infrastructure with websites that housed the internal systems of two Israeli companies – Galacticos and SNI.
“This modus operandi was not limited to municipal elections in France,” the head of Viginum, Marc-Antoine Brillant, said. “It also appears to have been used to carry out foreign digital interference operations in other countries or regions, such as Angola, Togo, the elections in Scotland, and the 2025 municipal election in New York.”