France on eve of vote asks for no leak shares

Macron data breach said to have fake info

PARIS — France’s election campaign commission said Saturday that “a significant amount of data” — and some fake information — has been leaked on social networks following a hacking attack on centrist Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign. It urged citizens not to relay the data on social media to protect the integrity of the French vote.

France’s government cybersecurity agency will investigate the attack, according to a government official.

The leak came 36 hours before the nation votes Sunday in a crucial presidential runoff between Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and just as a two-day blackout on campaigning began so that voters could reflect on their choice.

The leaked documents appear largely mundane, and the perpetrators remain unknown. It’s unclear whether the document dump will dent Macron’s large polling lead over Le Pen going into the vote.

The election commission met Saturday after the leaks emerged just before midnight Friday.

The commission urged French media and citizens not to relay the

leaked documents. French electoral laws impose a news blackout Saturday and most of Sunday on any campaigning and media coverage seen as swaying the election.

The Macron team asked the campaign oversight commission Saturday to bring in cybersecurity agency ANSSI to study the hack, according to a government official.

ANSSI can be called in only in cases where the cyberattack is “massive and sophisticated,” and the Macron hack appears to fit the bill, the official said.

Someone on 4chan — a site known, among other things, for cruel hoaxes and political extremism — posted links to a large set of data Friday night.

Macron’s team quickly confirmed that it had been hit by a “massive and coordinated” hack some weeks ago in which unidentified hackers accessed staffers’ personal and professional emails and leaked campaign finance material and contracts as well as fake documents online.

Le Pen’s campaign could not formally respond due to the campaigning blackout, but National Front official Florian Philippot asked in a tweet: “Will the #Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism deliberately buried?”

The Macron hacking announcement came just 10 days after the campaign’s digital chief, Mounir Mahjoubi, said it had been targeted by Russia-linked hackers but those hacking attempts had all been thwarted.

The documents leaked Friday were widely circulated on U.S. far-right sites. Experts dissecting the data say they spotted a couple of Russian names in the dump. Matt Suiche of cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies said “there’s Cyrillic script in the metadata,” but he added that it was hard to tell whether that’s due to carelessness or a deliberate misdirection.

Le Pen, 48, has brought her farright National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency, softening its message and seizing on working-class voters’ growing frustration with globalization and immigration.

The 39-year-old Macron, a former economy minister and investment banker who has never held elected office, also helped upend France’s traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.

After ditching France’s traditional left-right political parties in a firstround presidential ballot, voters were choosing between Macron’s business-friendly vision and Le Pen’s protectionist, closed-borders view. Macron wants a strong EU, while Le Pen favors a France-first policy that could see France spin out of the bloc.

Francois Mori The Associated Press Campaign posters for French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen hang in front of the polling station in Henin Beaumont, France, where Le Pen will vote in the runoff election Sunday.