French officials launch probe into Emmanuel Macron’s hacked e-mails
FRENCH officials have launched a probe into the hacking of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign e-mails just days after the scandal threatened to eclipse the presidential elections.
By BELINDA ROBINSON
Express.co.uk
Sun, May 7, 2017
The investigation was launched today as the French electorate took to the polls to vote in the country’s second round of voting.
French media had been warned not to publish anything from the hacked e-mails as police carried out an investigation.
Publishing any of the leaked information could lead to criminal charges, authorities said.
Russian hackers were believed to be behind the hacking scandal.
It’s thought that they wanted to derail Mr Macron’s drive to become French president by leaking embarrassing documents on the eve of the country’s election.
The presidential election commission met yesterday to discuss the breach of privacy.
Meanwhile, Mr Macron’s campaign confirmed on Friday that it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.
Mr Macron, is seen as the frontrunner in today’s election.
The election is billed as the most important in France in decades.
According to police, as much as nine 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, Mr 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.
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