Nude pictures of former French first lady
Carla Bruni were used to break into the computer systems of dozens of diplomats. The shocking security breach was first discovered at the G20 summit in Paris in February 2011
and may be ongoing.
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| Carla Bruni & Sarkozy Photo: AP |
“To see naked pictures of Carla Bruni click here” said a message sent to those attending, zhat included finance ministers and central bank representatives.
Bruni, a former supermodel who became President
Nicolas Sarkozy’s third wife in 2008, was well known for taking her clothes off in her early career. This prompted many to open an attachment which turned out to be a ‘Trojan’ with an embedded virus, although all recipients could see were the X-rated photographs.
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| Reuters |
Once accessed, the Malware infected the computers of senior officials as well as forwarding the offensive email on to other numbers stored on device.
“Almost everybody who received the email took the bait,” said a government source in Paris, saying that this included representatives from the
Czech Republic, Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia.
Sarkozy was first embarrassed by nude pictures of Bruni surfacing shortly after their marriage, while they were staying with the Queen at Windsor Castle during a state visit to Britain. (e.g.
ROFL)
Bruni, who still uses her maiden name in her career as a pop singer, later changed her image from a Paris sex kitten into a unassuming politician’s wife. The so-called
phishing attacks are thought to have
originated in China and were aimed at extracting information.
The attacks are still being investigated, and nobody is yet sure what information was distilled.
The United States is thought to have been the main target of the scam.
The cyber attack on the Paris G20 summit took place before the 6th
G20 summit in Cannes, in the south of France, which involved big heads of governments. There have been a number of similar attacks in France, leading the country to be proactive in cyber defence.
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| Getty Images |
A recent White Paper on Defence and National Security proclaimed cyber attacks as
“one of the main threats to the national territory” and
“made prevention and reaction to cyber attacks a major priority in the organisation of national security”.
This led to the creation of the
French Agency for National Security of Information Systems in 2009. Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, lost the presidential election to the Socialist
Francois Hollande in 2012 and is now dealing with a range of corruption charges.
