By Gabriel Stargardter<\/p>\n
PARIS, June 11 (Reuters) – 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, France’s disinformation \u200cdetection service, Viginum, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Last month, Reuters reported that French authorities suspected BlackCore was behind an online smear campaign \u200ctargeting three mayoral candidates from the hard-left, pro-Palestine France Unbowed party (LFI) in the local elections.<\/p>\n
At a press conference on Thursday alongside French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, Viginum chief \u200bMarc-Antoine Brillant said technical work had led them to BlackCore. Viginum subsequently presented a detailed report on BlackCore’s alleged actions around the world.<\/p>\n
“This modus operandi was not limited to municipal elections in France,” he 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.”<\/p>\n
However, Brillant said it was \u200cstill unclear who had commissioned BlackCore to meddle \u2060in France.<\/p>\n
“Our investigations did not make it possible to identify the sponsor or sponsors, if indeed they exist, behind this foreign digital interference,” he said.<\/p>\n
Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations on BlackCore’s \u2060actions, but also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign.<\/p>\n
“It goes without saying that obviously we asked them for assistance and explanations,” he said. “I do not doubt for a single instant that if a French private group, from French soil moreover, had \u200bengaged in \u200bforeign digital interference in Israel, they would have done the same to \u200bits ambassador on site.”<\/p>\n
Israel’s embassy in Paris did not \u200cimmediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, SCOTTISH ELECTIONS ALSO TARGETED<\/p>\n
Brillant did not explicitly mention who was targeted in last year’s New York City election, which was won by Zohran Mamdani. His victory thrilled many younger Jewish progressives but spooked more traditional pro-Israel New Yorkers with his outspoken support for the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n
Mamdani’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did New York City and New York state officials.<\/p>\n
The New York Police Department and the U.S. cyber defense agency CISA did not immediately return emails seeking comment. The \u200cFBI declined comment.<\/p>\n
In a subsequent report, Viginum said it detected BlackCore-linked accounts targeting \u200bJohn Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland. Swinney has described the situation in Gaza \u200bas a “man-made humanitarian catastrophe,” saying a genocide may be unfolding, \u200bciting civilian casualties, widespread destruction and statements by Israeli officials.<\/p>\n
Neither Swinney nor his party, the Scottish National Party, \u200cresponded to requests for comment. An email seeking comment \u200bfrom Scottish election officials was not immediately \u200breturned.<\/p>\n
The governments of Angola and Togo also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Before scrubbing its online presence following enquiries from Reuters, BlackCore described itself as “an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern sera of information warfare.” It \u200bsaid it provided governments and political campaigns \u200cwith “cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives.”<\/p>\n
It has not responded to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gabriel \u200bStargardter in ParisWriting by Dominique Vidalon and Gabriel Stargardter; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington, John Irish in \u200bParis and Sam Tabahriti in London.Editing by Susan Fenton and Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gabriel Stargardter PARIS, June 11 (Reuters) – Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France’s local elections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[102227,102228,7465,102229,60,47656,9,24,55,54,56,9360,102232,102231,102230,82],"class_list":["post-263649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-blackcore","tag-elections-in-scotland","tag-france","tag-france-unbowed","tag-israel","tag-john-swinney","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-scotland","tag-scottish-national-party","tag-sebastien-lecornu","tag-suspected","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}