Is national security something to worry about? Maybe. The mobile phone of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, was hacked, we learned from Mediapart. A cybersecurity incident which raises questions about the management of digital risks at the top of the State.
You shouldn't have clicked!
It all started on November 25. While he was in the middle of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers, Jean-Noël Barrot clicked on a corrupt link received via Signal, an encrypted messaging application. Fortunately, the Bahraini counterpart, Abdullatif al-Zayani, allowed the minister and the security services to discover the deception: intrigued by an unusual message sent from the French minister's phone, he told him about it. A simple message which triggered a mobilization of security services to assess the extent of the compromise.
Read our articles on the Minister of Foreign Affairs
ANSSI (the National Agency for Information Systems Security) was immediately contacted. According to the results of its first investigations, this time it is not spyware Predator nor Pegasus, who have already hit senior French officials. However, due to lack of collaboration from Jean-Noël Barrot, the investigation stagnated: the minister refused to give up his personal telephone, citing a busy schedule of diplomatic trips. According to experts' analyses, sensitive data may have been compromised, which would jeopardize national security and diplomatic relations… but it is impossible to go further for the moment.
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However, he had introduced a bill against phishing
Jean-Noël Barrot himself introduced, in 2023, a bill aimed at countering the campaigns of phishing. The phishing is an online fraud technique aimed at tricking users into revealing sensitive personal information, such as passwords or banking details, often through hacked or copied messages or websites.
Having become Minister of Foreign Affairs, the lightness of Jean-Noël Barrot in the face of a threat that he knew well raises questions.
