Paris: France took a hard line on Saturday over a huge trove of documents hacked from presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s campaign, warning on the eve of the election that anyone spreading them could face criminal charges.
The warning came after the pro-European centrist’s team lambasted a “massive and coordinated” hack that resulted in thousands of emails, accounting details and internal documents being posted late on Friday.
The leak was an 11th-hour twist ahead of Sunday’s decisive run-off after a bruising and divisive campaign pitting the 39-year-old former banker who embraces free-trade against his anti-EU, far-right rival Marine Le Pen.
“The dissemination of such data, which have been fraudulently obtained and in all likelihood may have been mingled with false information, is liable to be classified as a criminal offence,” France’s electoral commission said in a statement.
The documents spread on social media just before midnight as the candidates officially wrapped up campaigning, in what Mr Macron’s team termed an attempt at “democratic destabilisation, like that seen during the last presidential campaign in the United States”.
Hillary Clinton has alleged Russian hacking of her campaign’s emails was partly to blame for her defeat by Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November.
Macron’s campaign employs tough server protections and network encryption, but experienced hackers can always find a way in.
“In this kind of organisation the real potential fault-line is the human element,” the head of computer services for En Marche! recently said.
Because security procedures can become cumbersome, some people can be tempted to get around them by using personal email services which are little or badly protected.
Mr Macron’s team said the files were stolen weeks ago when several officials from his En Marche party had their personal and work emails hacked — in one of “an intense and repeated” series of cyber-attacks targeting the candidate since the launch of the campaign.
“Clearly, the documents arising from the hacking are all lawful and show the normal functioning of a presidential campaign,” aides said in a statement.
But they warned that whoever was behind the leak had mixed fake documents with real ones “in order to sow doubt and disinformation”.
The WikiLeaks website on Friday posted a link to the documents on Twitter, saying it had not yet discovered fakes in the cache of files and adding “we are very sceptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us”.
Last month, cybersecurity research group Trend Micro said Russian hackers called Pawn Storm had targeted Macron’s campaign, using “phishing” techniques to try and steal personal data.
Polls released earlier Friday had showed Mr Macron gaining momentum, forecasting victory for the pro-European, pro-business former banker with around 62 percent to 38 percent for Ms Le Pen.
