French election officials are desperately trying to prevent leaked data that was the result of a hack on the frontrunner from affecting Sunday’s critical presidential election. Centrist contender Emmanuel Macron’s team said it had suffered a “massive and coordinated” hack as Wikileaks, among others, posted 9 gigabytes of data from his campaign, including emails and financial documents, online. The documents apparently were a mixture of real and fake but they were released just as a mandatory pause in campaigning began, meaning that candidates weren’t allowed to discuss the documents.
Authorities quickly cautioned against spreading the leaked information, warning it could amount to a criminal offense. “On the eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot,” the French election commission said in a statement on Saturday.
If polls are to be believed, Macron should enjoy an easy victory Sunday as the last surveys showed he was ahead by more than 20 points over far-right contender Marine Le Pen. It seems the data leak may have been one last-ditch effort to narrow that lead and has raised fears of possible Russian involvement in the French election.
The Macron campaign was quick to tie what was happening in France to what the United States experienced last year. “Intervening in the last hour of the official campaign, this operation is obviously a democratic destabilization, as has already been seen in the United States during the last presidential campaign,” the Macron campaign said. Although the perpetrators are not yet known, one cybersecurity expert tells the Washington Post that “the operating mode is very similar to what happened with the DNC.” It wasn’t the first time the Macron campaign was the victim of hackers either with a cybersecurity firm saying that the campaign was targeted in March “by what appeared to be the same Russian operatives who were responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election,” reports the New York Times.
Despite the similarities it seems unlikely the leaks in France would have the same effect as in the United States in large part because there wasn’t anything evidently scandalous in the cadre of documents. And coming at the end of what was a whirlwind campaign, it could actually have the opposite effect. Sonia Delesalle-Stolper explains in the Guardian:
For months French voters have been living through a campaign full of twists and turns, violence and divisions. Families, friends and colleagues are divided and will remain so for some time
This latest attack is probably too obvious to substantially alter the result on Sunday and in fact, it might have the opposite effect from what the hackers had hoped for. This clear attempt to influence the democratic process might in fact convince some voters to turn up who had originally planned to abstain.
