Release of 21,075 emails associated with the French presidential campaign of Emmanuel Macron
The
2017 Macron e-mail leaks
were
leaks
of more than 20,000
e-mails
related to the campaign of
Emmanuel Macron
during the
2017 French presidential elections
, two days before the final vote. The leaks garnered an abundance of media attention due to how quickly news of the leak spread throughout the
Internet
, aided in large part by
bots
and
spammers
[1]
and drew accusations that the government of
Russia
under
Vladimir Putin
was responsible. The e-mails were shared by
WikiLeaks
and several American
alt-right
activists
[2]
through social media sites like
Twitter
,
Facebook
, and
4chan
.
[3]
Originally posted on a filesharing site called
PasteBin
, the e-mails had little to no effect on the final vote as they were dumped just hours before a 44-hour
media blackout
that is legally required by French electoral law.
[4]
The campaign said the e-mails had been "fraudulently obtained" and that false documents were mingled with genuine ones in order "to create confusion and misinformation."
[5]
[6]
Numerama, an online publication focusing on digital life, described the leaked material as "utterly mundane", consisting of "the contents of a
hard drive
and several emails of co-workers and
En Marche
political officials."
[7]
United States Senator
from
Virginia
,
Mark Warner
cited the e-mail leak as a reinforcement of the cause behind the
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
's investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
. Nonetheless, the Russian government denied all allegations of
foreign electoral intervention
.
[8]
Background
[
edit
]
After the first round of the
2017 French presidential election
produced no majority winner, the top two candidates proceeded to a
runoff election
to be held on 7 May of that year.
Emmanuel Macron
of the
En Marche!
party and
Marine Le Pen
of the
National Front
both began campaigning across
France
on their competing points of view.
[9]
The election was characterized by widespread dissatisfaction with the administration of
President Francois Hollande
and the French governmental establishment as a whole.
[10]
The election was widely regarded as a
referendum
between the
internationalist
centrism
of Macron and the
populist
far-right
ideology of Le Pen. After a slew of events considered to be detrimental to
globalization
and a triumph of
nationalism
and
isolationism
, such as the
Brexit referendum
, and the
election of Donald Trump
, many international observers viewed the French election as another possible trendsetting event for
Western
politics.
[11]
Le Pen's
anti-immigration
, anti-
NATO
, and
anti-European Union
stances attracted her the widespread support of far-right politicians and activists as far as the
United States
, like
Donald Trump
, and raised questions about possible
appeasement
of
Russia
.
[12]
Russia-funded media outlets such as
Russia Today
and
Sputnik News
consistently portrayed Le Pen in a positive light
[
according to whom?
]
[
vague
]
, and her campaign had even secured millions of
Euros
from a Russian lender in 2014.
[13]
In the
United States
, Le Pen was praised by President
Donald Trump
on several occasions,
[14]
[15]
and she saw widespread support and praise by large numbers of online conservative
trolls
and
Internet
alt-right
activists on
social media
platforms like
Twitter
,
Facebook
,
Reddit
, and
4chan
, who simultaneously attacked Macron.
[16]
These trolls used spamming of
Internet memes
and
misinformation
as tactics to assail Macron; accusing him of being a "
globalist
puppet" and a supporter of
Islamic
immigration.
[17]
This was not a new strategy, it had been executed to much success during the
2016 United States presidential election
. Legions of pro-Trump Internet users and bots had spammed social media and rapidly spread anti-Clinton news releases and leaks across the web as was the case with the
Democratic National Committee leaks
and the
John Podesta e-mail leaks
, allegedly with aid from the
Kremlin
.
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
Prior to the election, American national security officials warned the French government of the high probability of Russian digital meddling in the election, according to the
Director of the National Security Agency
,
Mike Rogers
.
[22]
E-mail leaks
[
edit
]
On Friday 5 May 2017, two days before the scheduled vote in the presidential election, the campaign of
Emmanuel Macron
claimed that it had been the target of a "massive hack". At the same time at least 9
gigabytes
of data were dumped on an anonymous file sharing site called
Pastebin
using a profile called 'EMLEAKS'.
[23]
The drop was made just hours before an
election media blackout
was due to take place in advance of Sunday's elections, as legally mandated under French electoral law which prevented Macron from issuing an effective response but also limited media coverage of the hack and subsequent leak.
[23]
[24]
The e-mails, totaling 21,075, along with other data was quickly posted to the anonymous message board,
4chan
, where it was shared by
alt-right
activists, notably
Jack Posobiec
, on Twitter
[25]
who had them translated by the Quebecois wing of right-wing outlet
The Rebel Media
. It has been remarked that at that time, Rebel Media's Quebecois wing consisted solely of radio personality
Eric Duhaime
.
[26]
The e-mail leak spread swiftly under the
hashtag
#MacronLeaks on Twitter and Facebook. Within three and a half hours of first being used, #MacronLeaks had reached 47,000 tweets. On Jack Posobiec's
Twitter
, the hashtag was retweeted 87 times within five minutes, likely pointing to the use of bots.
WikiLeaks
mentioned the leaks in subsequent tweets 15 times, contributing the most to the news' spread. Within a short period of time, #MacronLeaks was trending in France and was on a banner on the
Drudge Report
homepage. In another sign of bot use the ten most active accounts using the #MacronLeaks hashtag posted over 1,300 tweets in just over three hours. One particular account, posted 294 tweets in a span of two hours. Analysis shows that the hashtag was mentioned more times by American accounts than French ones, but posts concerning them were, by a slim margin, written more often in
French
than
English
.
[27]
[25]
The leaked e-mails were claimed to show evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Macron and his campaign including the committing of
tax evasion
and
election fraud
.
[28]
A less suggestive examination of the e-mails by
Numerama
, a French online publication focusing on technological news, described the leaked emails as "utterly mundane", consisting of "the contents of a hard drive and several emails of co-workers and En Marche political officials." Leaked documents included "memos, bills, loans for amounts that are hardly over-the-top, recommendations and other reservations, amidst, of course, exchanges that are strictly personal and private ? personal notes on the rain and sunshine, a confirmation email for the publishing of a book, reservation of a table for friends, etc."
[29]
Reaction
[
edit
]
In response to the attack,
Emmanuel Macron
said it was "democratic
destabilisation
, like that seen during the last presidential campaign in the United States" and said the hackers had mixed falsified documents with genuine ones, "in order to sow doubt and
disinformation
."
[30]
Vice President of the National Front
Florian Philippot
and Le Pen adviser said in a tweet, "Will
#
MacronLeaks teach us something that
investigative journalism
has deliberately killed?"
[31]
The French election commission warned media in the country that publishing the e-mails or discussing them so close to the election would be a violation of the law and issued a statement that in part read, "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
."
[32]
The leak did not appear to have any impact on the French presidential election which continued as scheduled and ended with a Macron victory by a margin of 32%.
[33]
Despite this, French security officials commenced an investigation into the hacking shortly after the election.
[34]
Shortly after the alt-right media boosted the leak, chief of Macron's campaign
Mounir Mahjoubi
stated that they have been watching GRU hacking attempts since February, and let them steal a carefully prepared cache of trivial and forged documents. After this was confirmed against the leaks contents, its credibility was seriously undermined.
[35]
[36]
In the
United States
, U.S. Senator from
Virginia
and ranking member of the
Senate Intelligence Committee
,
Mark Warner
said the hacking and subsequent leak only emboldened his committee's investigation, and former
Secretary of State
and Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton
said in a tweet, "Victory for Macron, for France, the EU, & the world. Defeat to those interfering w/democracy. (But the media says I can't talk about that)."
Perpetrators
[
edit
]
An assessment by Flashpoint, an American
cybersecurity
firm, stated that they determined with "moderate confidence" that the group behind the hacking and leak was
APT28
, better known as 'Fancy Bear', a hacking group with ties to
Russian military intelligence
. Metadata pulled from the dump revealed the name 'Georgy Petrovich Roshka', likely an alias, which has ties to a Moscow-based intelligence contractor. Many similarities, including the use of social media bots in an attempt to scrub metadata, also pointed to Fancy Bear.
[38]
However, on 1 June 2017, Guillaume Poupard, the head of France's premier cybersecurity agency said in an interview with the
Associated Press
the hack, "was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone".
[39]
On 9 May, two days after the election,
Mike Rogers
, head of the
NSA
, said in sworn testimony with the
United States Senate
he had been made aware of Russian attempts to hack French election infrastructure,
[40]
though he did not mention anything related to the identities of those behind the Macron email hacking. This followed a French announcement that electronic voting for France's overseas citizens would be discontinued in light of cybersecurity threats.
[41]
According to the
Le Monde
newspaper and with the work based on non-public rapport of Google and FireEye, the
GRU
is responsible.
[42]
Vladimir Putin has denied claims of election interference, claiming Russia has also been targeted.
[43]
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[
edit
]
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