Leaked Document Claims French Spy Software Also Targeted Canada

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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According to a report published by the French newspaper, Le Monde, France’s intelligence services is suspected to be behind an e-mail spying operation primarily aimed at Iran’s nuclear program but also trapped other targets, including a francophone Canadian media outlet. A document leaked by the former U.S. intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, was quoted by the newspaper to allege that Canada’s electronic spying agency discovered the French spying software in November 2009.

The document acquired by Le Monde include a slide presentation with the logo of Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC), i.e. the secretive Ottawa-based agency tasked to track foreign computer, radio and telephone communications. Furthermore, the classified top secret 2011 document was exclusively shared among the members of Five Eyes, i.e. secret agencies of United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. CSEC analysts code-named the spyware ‘Snowglobe,’ and discovered that it collected victims’ e-mails. The spyware was believed to have targeted Canada, Spain, Greece, Norway, Ivory Coast and Algeria.

However, the spyware was primarily focused to target Iran, mostly directed at the country’s foreign ministry, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the Iran University of Science and Technology and two Tehran schools heavily involved in nuclear research, i.e. Malek-E-Ashtar University of Technology and Imam Hussein University.  In addition to that, there was few additional details about Snowglobe’s objectives identified in the leaked presentation titled “Victimology: Global,” which stated of its objective to “target a French-language Canadian media organization.”