Launched at the end of 2021, the Viginum agency had remained discreet since. A caution linked in particular to the elections at the beginning of 2022, which impose a duty of reserve on public officials and which, in the case of the new agency responsible for combating disinformation, takes on a very particular dimension. But on the occasion of FIC 2022 and the day devoted to open source intelligence, the new director of the agency Gabriel Ferriol came to present Viginum’s activity and the way its teams intend to understand their mission.
“The first awareness was the Macronleaks in 2017. This episode allowed us to understand the impact of this type of malicious campaign on an electoral process” summarizes the leader. On the eve of the end of the second round of the presidential election in 2017, an archive containing allegedly stolen emails from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign team lands on the networks. If the timing of the publication limited its effect on the ballot, the government has learned the lesson. Initially, Anssi is responsible for investigating and clarifying this matter, but the subject is delicate and the cybersecurity agency is not the best equipped to deal with this threat. a new genre.
The reflection was however present long before the episode of the second round of June 2017. In January of this same year, the European Commissioner for Security Julian King already evoked on the stage of the FIC the concept of “hybrid attack”, which designates destabilization campaigns combining both cyberattacks and manipulation of information. The cybersecurity world took note of the 2016 US election, marked in particular by the hacking of the Democratic primary and which led to the election of Donald Trump as head of the country.
Characterize to fight better
Prefigured in the form of a “temporary task force”, the Viginum agency finally sees the light of day in 2021, responsible for combating “digital interference of foreign origin”. It now has around sixty agents responsible for identifying and investigating these campaigns. “It is an evolving and multifaceted threat, attackers can take advantage of social networks to move very quickly and allow it to grow. »
The agency wishes to focus mainly on the identification and characterization of this type of destabilization campaign and distinguishes four criteria that delineate the contours of these phenomena: an attack on the fundamental interests of the nation, the creation of misleading content, their dissemination automated or not and finally the involvement of foreign actors in the dissemination or design of the campaign. “Our mission is to observe the public debate and understand when it seems inauthentic. If we see the sign of an intervention by a foreign actor, we intervene” explains Gabriel Ferriol.
To achieve its aims, the agency can count on an appropriate legal framework, detailed in a decree published in December 2021 which authorizes them “the collection and exploitation of content publicly accessible to users of online platforms” including the activity on French territory exceeds a threshold of five million unique visitors per month. In other words, the major social networks are in the agency’s sights. If the agency intends to have its own capacities, Viginum is also acquiring tools and partners from civil society to meet its data analysis needs: the French startups Storyzy and Sahar are thus mentioned among its first suppliers. .
In terms of intervention, Viginum remains cautious for the moment. The agency prefers to position itself in the niche of prevention and characterization “We mainly produce analysis notes, intended for the government and ministries, or during election periods directly intended for election control bodies summarizes the director. Other avenues are however being considered: on RFI, the Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O had thus hinted that Viginum could transmit its reports to justice or diplomacy to initiate counter-interference initiatives. The famous analysis notes produced by the agents are not intended for the moment to go beyond the sole circle of the major administrations and intelligence services, but it is a track that Viginum does not forbid itself in the future.
Get to know the community
With less than a year of existence, the agency also has its share of challenges. Recruitment is one, the agency is currently “about halfway through its ramp-up” in terms of staffing. The training of its agents is another. And perhaps more thorny, the heavy task of being accepted by the community of researchers and investigators from civil society who are already working on the subject of disinformation.
On stage, some researchers do not necessarily see favorably the arrival of a government agency whose role would be to “centralize” the work on these phenomena and to monopolize the floor by carrying an official voice that would eclipse the efforts of civil society in this regard. For the time being, the agency can still count on the benefit of the doubt: “I was a bit harsh with Viginum,” says Alexander Alaphilippe, director of the NGO EU Disinfolab, “but the agency has no haven’t really had a chance to explain what she’s doing. »