A survey published by the British newspaper “The Sunday Times” reveals that the former European football boss, Michel Platini, and Senator Nathalie Goulet were targeted by hackers.
Le Monde with AFP
has two weeks exactly from the Football World Cup, which is held in Qatar (from November 20 to December 18), A published survey , Sunday, November 6, by The Sunday Times reveals that journalists, political, or even lawyers have been targeted by hired hackers to protect the reputation of Qatar.
These personalities were targeted for their investigations or their critical positions on the allocation and organization of the World Cup by the emirate which is held on calls for the boycott of the competition. The country is notably implicated for the treatment of workers on construction sites related to competition or respect for the rights of women and LGBTQ people. Avocats from the Qatari government, interviewed, denied the involvement of Qatar in this vast hacking operation.
Michel Platini and Nathalie Goulet Targeted
Among the targets of these hackers are a French senator, Nathalie Goulet, who accused Qatar of financed Islamic terrorism, or the former president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), Michel Platini, great defender of the Qatari candidacy. The piracy of the latter would have occurred shortly before it was heard by French justice in the context of an investigation into suspicions of corruption in the allocation of the World Cup to the Gulf country.
Massive operation of #Hacking of accounts of many personalities hostile to #qatar and a priori also of mine p… https://t.co/axrdwqfrvn
– Senator61 (@nathalie goulet زن زندگی آادی,)
Journalists are among the victims of hackers, like that of the Sunday Times Jonathan Calvert, which had investigated the maneuvers of corruption having led to the allocation of the World Cup in Qatar in 2010, or the American-Hungarian lawyer Mark Somos having filed a complaint against the royal family of Qatar in front of the United Nations High Highway High Highway.
According to the data recovered by The Sunday Times and the office of Investigative Journalism This year, it was from 2019 that these piracy operations have started with mailboxes or remote control of the microphones and cameras of computers of around fifty personalities, made by a group of Indian hackers. “The survey clearly specifies that the client (hackers) is the host of the next World Cup: Qatar”, write journalists.
The use of the Indian Hackeurs group would have been done through former British police or intelligence officers, now working in the private sector, details the investigation of the British newspaper.
Beyond Qatar, the survey reveals many other cases of hacking of personalities carried out by the same Indian group, on behalf of English law firms, autocratic regimes.
The Swiss President, Ignazio Cassis, was thus targeted just after an interview devolved to sanctions against Russia with Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, just like Philip Hammond when he was British Minister of Finance and While facing the benefits of Russian poisonings at Novitchok in the United Kingdom. An oligarch having fled Russia would also have been targeted at the request of a London law firm working for the Russian State.