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French intelligence services call for vigilance, due to the presence of Russian spies on several classifieds sites. Students are targeted.
Spies are looking for informants for Moscow on Leboncoin, teachers of mathematics or French, from high schools or technology companies that offer courses. They are prime targets for Russian spies, high potential targets. “The Russians are looking via the internet for students in areas that interest them and that are sensitive such as nuclear research, nuclear physics”explains Vincent Crouzet, ex-agent of the DGSE.
In Paris, in 2020, a young engineer in artificial intelligence was thus “stamped”, as the intelligence services say. A KGB expert contacted him on Leboncoin. They see each other in a restaurant for math lessons. But one day, the spy is more insistent and asks him for notes on the subject the student is working on and offers him money in exchange. The Russian spy is then unmasked in the middle of the transaction and sent back to Russia. Twelve similar cases have been identified in three years by the DGSI. For the first time, the services are alerting and communicating about the Russian techniques used and how to thwart them.