&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Blackcore: How an Israeli influence operation allegedly targeted elections across multiple countries")
French cybersecurity firm Viginum has accused Israeli firm Blackcore of interfering with the French local election, the New York Mayoral election and is also supposed to be active in Scotland, Angola and Togo. French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, in a press conference along with Virginium chief Marc-Antoine Brillant, said that technical work led them to Blackcore and its alleged action worldwide. It targeted the hard-left pro-Palestinian France Unbowed Party (LFI) in the local elections with an online smear campaign. Viginum released a detailed report on the modus operandi of the "digital interference operations". However, it failed to uncover who commissioned Black Core to meddle in France.
How did Blackcore target foreign elections?
The joint investigation by the Israeli media Haaretz and the French cybersecurity firm reveals that a multi-layered digital warfare toolkit was used by BlackCore to shape political outcomes. The report identifies that the Israeli firm Blackcore used networks of inauthentic, automated "bot" accounts on social media to carry out smear campaigns and shape political narratives. "Viginum identified the mobilisation of at least 256 accounts that enabled the spread of 1,400 comments, mainly on posts from @JohnSwinney, @theSNP, and @ScotGovFM (respectively 652, 338 and 112 comments)." It amplified those smear campaigns by purchasing aggressive, highly targeted digital advertisements across major social media platforms.
The firm reportedly used sophisticated, fraudulent online fronts, such as an organisation named "Sadaqah Palestine" to pose as a legitimate pro-Palestinian charity and tried to push authentic-looking updates on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to infiltrate pro-Palestinian spaces, to identify voter demographics, and harvest user data. When these accounts were tracked, they were found to be linked to Israeli companies hosted on Blackcore's server.
France asked for Israel's response
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The French government has Israel's explanations on BlackCore's actions, as well as help in figuring out who is behind the smear campaign. "I do not doubt for a single instant that if a French private group, from French soil moreover, had engaged in foreign digital interference in Israel, they would have done the same to its ambassador on site," said Lecornu. The Israeli embassy in Paris confirmed that France had reached out, but it is yet to carry out its own investigation on the allegations.
It also targeted last year's New York Mayoral election won by Zohran Mamdani, who had been a vocal pro-Palestinian and Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, who had described Gaza as a "man-made humanitarian catastrophe" and said a genocide may be unfolding.
According to Reuters, before erasing its online presence, Blackcore described itself as "an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare".
