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Crouching HR, Hidden Dragon: Chinese Cyber Spies Fool ‘Hundreds’ Of France’s Officials Using Fake Profiles
(@FRANCE24/Twitter)
Chinese cyber spies have lured 4,000 French corporate and political leaders using fake online profiles, say the state’s intelligence agencies, as reported by The Telegraph.
The spies have used LinkedIn to trap France’s top civil servants and executives. LinkedIn is one of the few US tech platforms to operate in China in a joint venture.
This comes in the series of several past incidents where China has been accused of using social media accounts to infiltrate Europe and America.
French businesses and state administration have been guilty of “culpable naivety” over the foreign spy threat via LinkedIn despite clear warnings from UK intelligence as early as 2015, as revealed by a note by France’s intelligence agencies DGSI and DGSE leaked to the newspaper Le Figaro.
Hundreds of officers have been taken by offers of jobs or collaboration from fake accounts run that pose as recruiters and think tanks. The spies allegedly presented an attractive profiles and sent standardised messages making high-paying collaborative offers and free foreign trips to participate in seminars and meet a clients.
Commenting that France’s awareness of online espionage is woefully low as compared to that of Britain, the agent of DGSI stated that in future France would respond to such attacks blow for blow.
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