Cyber faultlines exposed
paris — They knew months ago that top-of-the-range hackers had been targetting them. They believe their security measures, too, had been nothing short of toprate. But, in the end, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s team got hacked.
And on Friday night, just an hour before the end of official campaigning, thousands of documents including emails and accounts belonging to his En Marche! (On the Move!) movement were dumped online.
“It’s just incredible what’s happening,” said Belgian researcher Nicolas Vanderbiest, a specialist on online rumours, whose map showing how the “Macron Leak” propagated on Twitter has Wikileaks at the centre. Macron’s campaign team says it put in place servers protected by sophisticated software filters, recommended the use of several encrypted messaging and cellphone networks, and required double and triple authentication to access emails. It says it stored its information in multiple-partitioned cells, with databases separated like fortresses, accessible by passwords that were complex and regularly changed.
But a squad of shadowy hackers seem to have found the back door.
“In this kind of organisation the real potential faultline is the human element,” the head of computer services for En Marche! recently told.
Because security procedures can become long and cumbersome, some people can be tempted to get around them by using personal email services which are little or badly protected.