Russia Not Playing Roulette with French Presidential Election

Hacked documents from Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign were posted online Friday night in a “massive and co-ordinated attack” after the front-runner complained of Russian attempts to destabilise him.
Nine gigabytes of data were posted by a user called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a document-sharing site that allows anonymous posting.
They included emails, accounting documents and contracts – all legal – from his political movement En Marche! (Onwards!).
En Marche! said that several of its leaders had their emails hacked last week, but the attackers bundled them with fake emails and delayed posting them for maximum effect.
Macron’s team said: “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 files were obtained several weeks ago thanks to the hacking of personal and professional mailboxes of several leaders of the En Marche! movement.
“Those who circulate these documents add a number of false documents to genuine documents in order to sow doubt and disinformation.
“The hackers’ ambition is obviously to harm the movement En Marche! A few hours of the second round of the French presidential election.
“Obviously, the documents from piracy are all legal and reflect the normal operation of a presidential campaign.
“Their dissemination makes internal data public but there is no concern about the legality and the conformity of the documents.’
“It is not a mere piracy operation but an attempt to destabilise the French presidential election.’
France’s election campaign commission held a meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the hacking attack. It urged French media not to publish the documents, warning that some of them were “probably” fake.
Former economy minister, Macron’s team has previously complained about attempts to hack its emails during a fraught campaign, blaming Russian interests for the cyber attacks.
President Vladimir Putin, previously accused of interfering in last year’s US polls, is said to favour anti-EU candidate, Marine Le Pen, whose election would contribute to the further destabilisation of the Union, something which he dreams about at night.
On April 26, Macron’s team said it had been the target of a series of attempts to steal email credentials since January, but that the perpetrators had so far failed to compromise any campaign data.
In February, the Kremlin denied that it was behind any such attacks, even though Macron’s camp renewed complaints against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.
Voters will go to the polls on Sunday (today) to choose the country’s next president in a run-off between Macron and Marine Le Pen.
While one poll puts Macron 60 points ahead, an Ifop poll says he leads Le Pen 63 percent to 37 percent. Four other surveys show Macron on 62 and Le Pen on 38.