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French candidate says he was hacked
Macron reports data breach on campaign deadline.
PARIS — One day before France’s most momentous presidential election in decades, authorities Saturday began investigating the “massive and coordinated piracy action” that centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron reported minutes before the official end of campaigning.
Late Friday — just before the campaign’s midnight deadline — the Macron team announced that it had been the victim of a hacking operation that saw thousands of emails and other internal communications dumped into the public domain.
Although the impact of the data dump on France’s high-stakes race was not apparent, the news quickly stoked fears of a targeted operation meant to destabilize the electoral process, especially after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin commissioned an “influence campaign” to spin the U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor.
France’s government cybersecurity agency will investigate the attack, according to a government official who said it appeared to be a “very serious” breach.
Macron, 39, is facing off against the far-right populist and National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who for years has benefited from Russian financial support and from favorable coverage in state-run Russian media. Voters are set to decide Sunday which candidate becomes France’s next president.
Voting already began Saturday in France’s overseas territories and embassies.
“This operation is obviously a democratic destabilization, as has already been seen in the United States,” the Macron campaign said.
It was not clear who was being blamed for the hacking, which the campaign said led to the leaking of documents via social media.
France’s election campaign commission said the leaked data apparently came from Macron’s “information systems and mail accounts from some of his campaign managers.” It said the leaked data had been “fraudulently” obtained and that fake documents have probably been commingled with it.
The commission urged French media and citizens Saturday “not to relay” the leaked documents “in order not to alter the sincerity of the vote.”
French electoral laws impose a news blackout Saturday and most of Sunday on any campaigning and media coverage seen as swaying the election.
But analysts were quickly able to determine that the social media campaign following the data dump originated in the U.S., in a well-known network of alt-right Twitter accounts.
The leaked documents appear to be largely mundane communications, with a few items so out of character that they might be fakes. Other documents don’t appear related to the campaign at all.
The Macron team’s announcement about the hacking attack came just 10 days after the campaign’s digital chief, Mounir Mahjoubi, said it had been targeted by Russia-linked hackers — but that those hacking attempts had all been thwarted.
Mahjoubi did not respond to requests for comment amid the campaign blackout Saturday.
Despite France’s strict prohibition on campaigning after the deadline, Florian Philippot, the National Front’s deputy leader, tweeted Saturday: “Will #Macronleaks teach us something that investigative journalism has deliberately killed?”
The Macron campaign filed a formal complaint with France’s National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing.
“The ambition of the authors of this leak is obviously to harm the movement En Marche! in the final hours before the second round of the French presidential election,” the Macron statement read.
En Marche (Onward) is the centrist political movement that Macron founded a year ago with a platform that blends certain aspects of fiscal conservatism with social liberalism.
The Macron team asked the campaign oversight commission Saturday to bring in cybersecurity agency ANSSI to study the hack, according to a government official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
ANSSI can only be called in for cases where the cyberattack is “massive and sophisticated” — and the Macron hack appears to fit the bill, the official said.
The French presidential campaign has been unusually bitter, a reflection of the deep divisions and public disaffection with politics.
Le Pen, 48, has brought her far-right National Front party, closer than ever to the French presidency, seizing on workingclass voters’ growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure.