French Elections: Russian hackers steal, share Emmanuel Macron’s emails

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Russian hackers are alleged to have stolen nine gigabytes of email belonging to leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign and released them online.

Macron’s campaign emails were posted anonymously on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing.

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.

The presidential election commission said in a 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.

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.

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