PARIS – The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said in a statement late Friday it had been the victim of a “massive and coordinated hacking attack,” leading to the diffusion of “various internal information” on social media.
A large trove of documents were released online earlier Friday including emails, accounting documents and contracts from the campaign of the centrist candidate.
The files were posted anonymously on a sharing website and the person responsible for the posting remains unclear.
Macron’s political movement En Marche! (On the Move) later confirmed that it had been hacked.
“The files circulating were obtained several weeks ago by hacking into private and public mailboxes of several leaders of the movement,” said the statement.
It also said the leaked documents only showed the normal functioning of a presidential campaign, but the files posted online mixed authentic documents with fake ones to sow “doubt and misinformation.”
“It is not a simple hacking operation but an attempt to destabilize the French presidential election,” said the movement, adding that it will “take all necessary initiatives with public and private actors” to clarify the incident.
The leakage happened within the final hours of the last campaigning day. Macron is to face off with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in a runoff vote on Sunday.
Macron has maintained his centriest position over Le Pen, according to surveys conducted by French pollsters.
The latest poll released on Thursday by the French Institute of Public Opinion showed that 61 percent of votes will go to Macron and 40 percent to Le Pen, consistent with the poll conducted before.
