The hacking investigation

The troves of data related to Macron’s movement, En Marche, were leaked on the internet Friday night, hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect.

Links to the zip and torrent files were posted under the profile of someone called EMLEAKS on Pastebin, an anonymous publishing website. The archive was shared on the popular forum 4chan and promoted on Twitter by far-right activists, before WikiLeaks gave it extensive exposure online.

So far, the leak appears to mostly involve documents that show the mundane inner workings of a presidential campaign, including professional and private emails, memos, contracts and accounting documents. The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the hacking of Macron’s campaign.

Macron’s campaign said in a statement shortly before the blackout went into effect that the professional and personal email accounts of some of its staff members had been hacked “some weeks ago.”

It said that all of the stolen documents were “legal” and “authentic” but that fake ones had been added to “sow doubt and disinformation.” It denounced the hack as an attempt to destabilize democracy. It will presumably take experts weeks to sift through and assess all the leaked documents. Experts suspect a Russian-linked espionage operation known as A.P.T. 28, or Fancy Bear, may be involved, although there is no firm evidence that the operation was behind the thefts. European and American analysts have determined that the group was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee last year.