GO HACK OFF!
Stolen data haunt historic election in France
THE EVE OF what could be France’s most momentous election was fraught with uncertainty and unease as an eleventh-hour hacking scandal haunted voters and the two remaining candidates.
France’s election campaign commission said Saturday “a significant amount of data” was hacked from independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron just before the campaign’s official end Friday night.
The data dump, which included real and fake information, came just as French law mandated a 44-hour media blackout ahead of Sunday’s critical presidential runoff.
A French government official said the state cybersecurity agency will investigate the attack. The commission said the data leaked apparently came from Macron’s “information systems and mail accounts from some of his campaign managers.”
Officials urged citizens not to share the leaked documents on social media to protect the integrity of the French vote.
On Sunday, Macron (photo inset) faces off against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Voting started Saturday in France’s overseas territories and in some embassies abroad.
It was unclear who was behind the hack and subsequent leak. It was also unclear whether the document dump will hurt Macron, who had a large polling lead over Le Pen.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Saturday called the hacking of Macron a “nightmare scenario.” Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is part of the panel probing Russia’s meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election. Word of the French dump came just 10 days after Macron’s campaign said it had been targeted by Russialinked hackers — but that those hacking attempts had all been thwarted.
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 French voting watchdog on Saturday also urged the Interior Ministry to look into claims by Le Pen’s team of ballot tampering in favor of Macron.
Sunday will be a closely watched election following an unusually bitter contest that drew comparisons to the 2016 U.S. election.