Hackers hit campaign of French candidate
PARIS — The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said Friday it suffered a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack and document leak that it called a bid to destabilize Sunday’s presidential runoff.
His far-right rival Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, said she believes she can pull off a surprise victory in the highstakes vote that could change Europe’s direction.
Fe a r s of hac k i ng, f a ke news manipulation and Russian meddling clouded the French campaign but had largely gone unrealized — until late Friday ’s admission by Macron’s campaign that it had suffered a coordinated online pirate attack had led to the leak of campaign emails and financial documents. It was unclear who was behind the hack and the leak.
A campaign blackout starting minutes after the Macron team announcement means that Le Pen’s campaign can’t legally comment on the leak.
In a statement, Macron’s En Marche movement said the hack took place a few weeks a go, a nd t ha t t he l e a ke d d o c u ment s h ave been mixed with false documents to “seed doubt and disinformation.” Hillary Clinton’s U.S. presidential campaign suffered similar leaks, and also said that authentic documents were mixed with false documents.
The t i ming of t he l e a k c o u l d b e s e e n a s e i t h e r bizarre or inspired.
The documents’ release just before France enters a roughly two-day-long blackout — during which politi- cians, journalists and even ordinary citizens are meant to pull back from any public election talk to avoid swaying the vote — means that the leak may have very little impact beyond the overheated world of Twitter and Reddit.
On the other hand, the messages’ release just before France’s political machinery shuts down for the weekend might mean that talk of the leak — regardless of its veracity — will dominate dinner table conversations as French voters make up their minds today.
The candidates stopped campaigning at midnight Friday to give voters a day of reflection before the election. It’s a stark choice: Le Pen’s anti-immigration, anti-European Union platform, or Macron’s progressive, pro-EU stance.
Tensions marred the race right to the end.
France’s presidential voting watchdog called on the Interior Ministry late Friday to look into claims by the Le Pen campaign that ballots are being tampered with nationwide to benefit Macron. The Le Pen campaign said electoral administrators in several regions who received ballots for both candidates found the Le Pen ballots “systematically torn up.”
Le Pen, 48, has brought her far-right National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, c l o s e r t h a n e v e r t o t h e French presidenc y, seizing on working- class voters’ growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in French politics.
The 39-year-old Macron, too, played a key role in upending France’s traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.