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! (Onwards!) 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 (2200 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 p.m. (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 percent 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 26,
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 APT 28, a group tied to the
GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the leak. He
cited similarities with U.S. 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 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 U.S. 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.
U.S.
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.
*Reuters*
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