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Days Before Election: Macron Campaign Says It Is the Victim of Massive, Coordinated Hacking Campaign (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the here-we-go-again dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: A large trove of emails from the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was posted online late on Friday, a little more than a day before voters go to the polls to choose the country's next president in a run-off against far-right rival Marine Le Pen. Some nine gigabytes of data were posted by a user called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a document-sharing site that allows anonymous posting. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or whether the emails were 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. In its statement on Friday, En Marche! said that the documents released online 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." "The seriousness of this event is certain and we shall not tolerate that the vital interests of democracy be put at risk," it added.

9 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Putin at it again? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Informative

    So far as I can see, it's no big secret that Putin would like to destabilize the EU, especially NATO countries, because a weak EU/NATO means it's easier for him to implement his long-term agenda.

    1. Re:Putin at it again? by parallel_prankster · · Score: 3, Informative

      They funny thing is Le Penn has also filed a complaint about hacking by the "extreme left"! So whether that is supposed to attack the credibility of Macron's accusations or add to them, we dont know.

    2. Re: Putin at it again? by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

      Russia has a lot of useful idiots in the West. Some, I think, just don't want to admit the candidate or political movement they favor is either the unwitting beneficiary of Russian hacking "largess", or, potentially much more sinister, is actively courting it. I view these people as just a more brainless breed of partisan. But I do think there are some who are actually rather sympathetic to Russia, who admire the more autocratic leanings of the current Russian government. The latter, when they gain positions of influence, while they may not be out and out agents or moles, are still fairly dangerous.

      Le Pen's political movement, in particular, has historically pro-Fascist leanings, and most certainly views Russia in a fairly friendly light.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re: Putin at it again? by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Informative

      Russia has a lot of useful idiots in the West. Some, I think, just don't want to admit the candidate or political movement they favor is either the unwitting beneficiary of Russian hacking "largess", or, potentially much more sinister, is actively courting it. I view these people as just a more brainless breed of partisan. But I do think there are some who are actually rather sympathetic to Russia, who admire the more autocratic leanings of the current Russian government. The latter, when they gain positions of influence, while they may not be out and out agents or moles, are still fairly dangerous.

      Le Pen's political movement, in particular, has historically pro-Fascist leanings, and most certainly views Russia in a fairly friendly light.

      Front National and Le Pen is officially endorsed and financially supported by Putin. and officially endorse Putin back.The favourable light is official

    4. Re: Putin at it again? by guacamole · · Score: 2, Informative

      Let's just call everyone who doesn't agree with the mainstream media a useful idiot, or wait, a Kremlin bot. Wait, it has already been done:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      http://www.nakedcapitalism.com...

      http://www.nakedcapitalism.com...

  2. Re:Well it can't be the Russsians by mi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course, they do — financed by Russia Le Pen wants to lift sanctions against Kremlin and endorsed Crimea "occupendum" as a legitimate transfer of Ukraine's land to Russia.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  3. Reasons to not use Windows: by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1, Informative

    #3: You gonna get hacked!

    Why do I assume it was a Windows machine that was compromised? Because it's always* a Windows machine that gets compromised.

    * excludes all instances of morons running internet-facing PHP sites *cough*wordpress*cough*

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  4. Re:Well it can't be the Russsians by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

    They don't have a horse i this fight.

    Le Pen wins, the entire EU will likely collapse. The Russians don't have a horse in this fight. They have the whole barn and every living create in it in this fight.

  5. Re:False flag. by divide+overflow · · Score: 1, Informative

    This has the smell of something the Macron campaign released to blame on LePen. Someone wanting to help LePen would have released it earlier and given people a chance to examine the documents.

    You have an *exceptionally bad* sense of "smell" and clearly no idea how a smear campaign is done. The document release was deliberately done *one hour* before a French law that imposes a media blackout on election discussions, preventing Macron from refuting the legitimacy of the documents in the document dump. Macron was way ahead in the polls--it makes ZERO sense for Macron to poison his own lead. The document dump has all the hallmarks of Russian election tampering that has happened both in the US and in multiple European elections.