French candidate Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked

PARIS: Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a 'massive' computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online 1-1/2 days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead
over Le Pen in polls on Friday.

As much as 9 gigabytes of data were posted on a profile
called Emleaks to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous
document sharing. It was not immediately clear who was
responsible for posting the data or if any of it was genuine. In a statement, Macron's political movement En Marche! confirmed that it had been hacked.



"The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive
and co-ordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the
diffusion on social media of various internal information," the
statement said. An interior ministry official declined to comment, citing French rules that forbid any commentary liable to influence an
election, which took effect at midnight on Friday at 22:00 GMT.

The presidential election commission said in statement that
it would hold a meeting later on Saturday after Macron's
campaign informed it about the hack and publishing of the data. It urged the media to be cautious about publishing details
of the emails given that campaigning had ended, and publication
could lead to criminal charges. Comments about the email dump began to appear on Friday evening just hours before the official ban on campaigning began.

The ban is due to stay in place until the last polling stations
close Sunday at 8 pm (1800 GMT). Opinion polls show independent centrist Macron is set to beat National Front candidate Le Pen in Sunday's second round of voting, in what is seen to be France's most important election in decades. The latest surveys show him winning with about 62 per cent of the vote.



Russian hand seen

Former economy minister Macron's campaign has previously
complained about attempts to hack its emails, blaming Russian
interests in part for the cyber attacks. On April 26th, the team said it had been the target of a attempts to steal email credentials dating back to January, but that the perpetrators had failed to compromise any campaign data.

The Kremlin has denied it was behind any such attacks, even
though Macron's camp renewed complaints against Russian media
and a hackers' group operating in Ukraine. Vitali Kremez, director of research with New York-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, told Reuters his review indicates that APT28, a group tied to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak.

He cited similarities with US election hacks that have been previously
attributed to that group. APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of En Marche, which it likely used to send tainted emails to hack into the campaign's computers, Kremez said. Those domains include onedrive-en-marche.fr and mail-en-marche.fr.



"If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a
significant escalation over the previous Russian operations
aimed at the US presidential election, expanding the approach
and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more
direct attempts to sway the outcome," Kremez said. France is the latest nation to see a major election overshadowed by accusations of manipulation through cyber hacking.

US intelligence agencies said in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of parties tied to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to influence the election on behalf of Republican rival Donald Trump.

On Friday night as the #Macronleaks hashtag buzzed around
social media, Florian Philippot, deputy leader of the National
Front, tweeted "Will Macronleaks teach us something that
investigative journalism has deliberately killed?" Macron spokesman Sylvain Fort, in a response on Twitter, called Philippot's tweet 'vile'.

En Marche! said the documents only showed the normal
functioning of a presidential campaign, but that authentic
documents had been mixed on social media with fake ones to sow
"doubt and misinformation". Ben Nimmo, a UK-based security researcher with the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council think tank, said initial analysis indicated that a group of US far-right online activists were behind early efforts to spread the documents via social media.

They were later picked up and promoted by core
social media supporters of Le Pen in France, Nimmo said. The hashtag #MacronLeaks was first spread by Jack Posobiec,
a pro-Trump activist whose Twitter profile identifies him as
Washington DC bureau chief of the far-right activist site
Rebel TV, according to Nimmo and other analysts tracking the
election. Posobiec could not immediately be reached to comment by
Reuters.

"You have a hashtag drive that started with the alt-right in
the United States that has been picked up by some of Le Pen's
most dedicated and aggressive followers online," Nimmo told
Reuters. Alt-right refers to a loose-knit group of far-right
activists known for their advocacy of extremist ideas, rejection
of mainstream conservatism and disruptive social media tactics.