MACRON IS HACKED OFF
Presidential candidate blasts huge online leak just before today’s key vote
FRENCH presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s team blasted a “massive and co-ordinated hacking attack” against his campaign after a flood of internal documents were released online barely 24 hours before the election.
The centrist candidate’s furious staff said the release late on Friday of thousands of e-mails, accounting documents and other files was an attempt at “democratic destabilisation, like that seen during the last presidential campaign in the US”.
The documents spread on social media just before midnight on Friday — when Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen officially wrapped up campaigning for today’s decisive run-off vote — with his aides calling the leak “unprecedented in a French electoral campaign”.
Hillary Clinton has alleged that Russian hacking of her campaign’s e-mails was partly to blame for her defeat in last year’s US presidential election, when she lost to Donald Trump.
The French leak, posted by someone calling themselves EMLEAKS, came as an 11th-hour twist in what has been one of the most dramapacked elections in French history.
Macron’s team said the files were stolen weeks ago when several officials from his En Marche! (Onward) party had their personal and work e-mails hacked — one of “an intense and repeated” series of cyberattacks against Macron since the launch of the campaign.
“Clearly, the documents arising from the hacking are all lawful and show the normal functioning of a presidential campaign,” aides said in a statement.
But they warned that whoever was behind the leak had mixed fake documents with real ones “in order to sow doubt and disinformation”.
The WikiLeaks website posted a link on Twitter to the trove of documents, saying it was not responsible for the leak but that it was “examining” parts of the cache, amounting to around 9GB of data in total.
Last month cybersecurity research group Trend Micro said Russian hackers called Pawn Storm had targeted Macron’s campaign, using “phishing” techniques to try to steal personal data.
Senior Le Pen aide Florian Philippot suggested on Twitter that the leak might contain information that the media had deliberately suppressed.
France’s presidential election commission advised media not to publish details of the documents, warning that publication could lead to criminal charges and that some of the documents were probably fake.
The upset came at the end of a frantic final day of campaigning and as fresh security concerns emerged following the arrest of a suspected extremist.
Polls released earlier on Friday had shown Macron gaining momentum, forecasting victory for the pro-European, pro-business former banker with around 62% to 38% for Le Pen.
He and Le Pen — who is hoping to ride a global wave of anti-establishment anger to the Élysée Palace — have offered starkly different visions for France during a campaign that has been closely watched in Europe and around the world.
In another major security incident on Friday, Greenpeace activists partially scaled the Eiffel Tower to hang a giant anti-Le Pen banner reading “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and “#resist”.
Paris police said the stunt exposed “flaws” in the security surrounding the world-famous monument, and city authorities announced immediate measures to reinforce patrols at the site.
Le Pen has tried to portray Macron as being soft on security and Islamic fundamentalism, playing to the concerns of many of her supporters after a string of terror attacks in France that have killed more than 230 people since 2015.
She has said she wants to copy Britain’s example and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership, setting alarm bells ringing in capitals across the bloc. — AFP