France hack leaks emails of candidate

THE FRENCH did invent the phrase déjà vu.

Large troves of emails from French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron appeared to have been leaked online Friday, two days before the country heads to one of its most important elections in decades.

A user named EMLEAKS posted nine gigabytes of data to a document-sharing site, though it is unclear who is behind the breach. Macron’s party, the centrist En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed what is said was a large-scale attack.

“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and coordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information,” it said in a statement.

It added that documents from the hack several weeks ago had been mixed with false ones to “seed doubt and disinformation” ahead of Sunday’s election.

The 39-year-old currently enjoys a substantial lead in the polls over far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who has railed against immigration and the European Union.

Le Pen said Friday that even if she does not win, her party has “imposed the overhaul” on politics in the country by challenging the status-quo.

Macron (photo inset), who served as France’s economy minister under current president Francois Hollande, has said that he started his own party because he rejects the current cleavages in his country’s political debate.

The Macron hacks are eerily similar to last year’s breaches against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.