Cyber Spies Strike Greenpeace

Spies have infiltrated Greenpeace. Espionage comes in many forms – and government or insurgent intelligence operatives need not always play a role, although corporate spies sometimes come from a government background, as in the recent spy flick Duplicity.

This time, Greenpeace has allegedly been targeted by EDF, the huge French nuclear energy company whose initials stand for Electricité de France. Top personnel at EDF have been charged with spying on the environmental organization. After investigators from France’s special cyber crimes unit spent three hours in the French Greenpeace office, it appears that the extent of the professional espionage may be far wider than originally expected.

Pascal Husting, Director of Greenpeace France, responded to the discovery of a larger, more calculated operation, saying, “Three days after the explosion of this scandal, EDF and Kargus Consulting’s line of defense no longer stands up…. This is not the work of some isolated hacker. They have clearly been spying on all of our work. Why? What is EDF scared of?”

What indeed. It’s not uncommon for Greenpeace to be the target of companies whose business practices or policy agendas are antithetical to the environmental values Greenpeace works to protect. So EDF’s espionage seems to imply that if anything, they have something to hide…something they’re worried Greenpeace may have found out about…?

Dr. Rianne Teule, Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner, may have the answer: “Clearly EDF feels threatened by our criticism of their nuclear energy program…. We have been calling for an open debate in the public domain for a sustainable energy supply but EDF seems incapable of any sort of transparency.”

As to how far-reaching the infiltration is, Head of IT for Greenpeace France Loic Prévotat says he does not know to what extent Greenpeace’s international servers were affected by EDF’s cyber espionage. “We do not have the technical nor economic means,” Prévotat states, “to protect ourselves from a hacking onslaught backed by big business.”

It seems Greenpeace will be going directly to the perpetrator to find out whether EDF’s expert cyber espionage has been employed against any other of the group’s 28 offices around the world. Greenpeace has also requested that the Director of EDF Security, Admiral Durieux, be relieved of his post at the company until such time as the whole truth about the invasion of privacy is uncovered.

images courtesy of www.matternetwork.com and www.arch.mcgill.ca