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The campaign staff of Emmanuel Macron, one of the two candidates in France's presidential election run-off, claim to have been targeted by a massive hacking operation that leaked sensitive documents:
On the eve of the most consequential French presidential election in decades, the staff of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the campaign had been targeted by a "massive and coordinated" hacking operation, one with the potential to destabilize the nation's democracy before voters go to the polls on Sunday.
The digital attack, which involved a dump of campaign documents including emails and accounting records, emerged hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect. While the leak may be of little consequence, the timing makes it extremely difficult for Mr. Macron to mitigate any damaging fallout before the runoff election, in which he faces the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has pledged to pull France out of the euro and hold a referendum to leave the European Union.
French authorities recently arrested a suspect who admitted to attacking the campaign website for the other candidate, Marine Le Pen.
Also at the Washington Post, CNN, BBC, and Reuters.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:13PM (8 children)
These are the alleged leaks [archive.is]. It goes without saying that they are in French.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:33PM
It goes without saying that they are in French.
Those bastards, always plugging that dead language. By the 24th century Frenchmen will speak English with perfect Royal Shakespearian accents, they should get a move on.
(Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:52PM
merde
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:37PM (3 children)
Not all! [twimg.com]
Any Frenchies here know these names or the legal status of 3-MMC [wikipedia.org] in France?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:04PM (2 children)
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/3-MMC#Legal_issues [psychonautwiki.org]
http://www.who.int/medicines/access/controlled-substances/4.4_3-MMC_CritReview.pdf?ua=1 [who.int]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @07:00PM (1 child)
I do not speak French, so I've not read the eml's myself. It does appear this leak is not at all what it appears. More here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:08AM
It makes sense that you would reply to a post about illegal narcotics with a link to your own drugged out ramblings.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:38PM
> It goes without saying that they are in French.
Well, other than the ones in russian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:25PM
In French? Those arrogant French. Always putting their documents into French, so that civilized people can't read them!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:25PM (6 children)
I think this is a low profile operation, if it were some secret service level hacking they would have done it at least one week earlier, there is not enough time to get the public opinion moved by whatever content was leaked. Even if it were a bombshell, because you need time to check a little facts out.
Might even be a false flag, to put Macron in the role of victim.
Personally after the charade of Tsipras I am not much convinced either candidate can really affect the system, but whatever.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:38PM (4 children)
Given there is several GB of data included in the leak that seems a bit far-fetched. That data would have had to have come from somewhere, and either generating it from scratch or sanitizing actual inboxes to ensure nothing you don't want in the public domain is included would be a non-trivial task. You'd also have to trust all those involved not to reveal that the leak was faked, or to leave any evidence in the leak that it was a fake, which would be a major risk.
Timing and actual source wise, you're probably right with your first thought; it doesn't make much sense as an attempt to smear Macron as there's not really enough time to go through the data, find anything suitable, and make it public in time to really influence the result - although I'm sure those who don't support Macron are going to try. Or maybe the "state actors" have only just broken in and have adopted a "better late than never" approach, in which case that probably says more about how competent Macron's IT security people compared to others we could mention. Personally though, I'm more inclined to think that is just some random hacker who stumbled on the data and dumped it into the public domain more for the lulz rather than any specific attempt to influence the election, although that may have played a smaller part as well.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:58PM (1 child)
Timing and actual source wise, you're probably right with your first thought; it doesn't make much sense as an attempt to smear Macron as there's not really enough time to go through the data, find anything suitable, and make it public in time to really influence the result
There doesn't have to be anything to smear him with. LePen's really trailing in the polls, not ~3% like trump was but ~25%. They've got nothing to lose so it makes sense they would try everything they can no matter how unlikely because saving it for after the election guarantees it won't make a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @07:02PM
...any yet somehow I doubt I'll be able to contain my unsurprise when LePen wins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:36PM
Well it might of just been a result of him doing so well in the election so far. Most people do not want to break the law and go to jail, but when faced with the imminent election of someone you deem a criminal the punishment might seem more bearable.
Alternatively, this was all pre-planned with exactness. And the point of the leaks was to maximize chaos. To setup the indictment of Macron but let him win the election, so they spend the next year or whatever with a leader spending all his time trying to cover his ass and not leading and then some interim leader who just takes over after Macron is thrown out or resigns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:27PM
What are you talking about, you jackass? A false flag doesn't mean it didn't happen. You sound like one of these confused slaves that acts like known fucking facts are conspiracy theories made up by loons. Pull your head out of your flu shot taking ass. The op is saying they may have simply did it to make macron the victim. That's it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:23PM
Bingo! [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Dunbal on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:17PM (14 children)
Someone needs to tell him that if he plans on imitating Hillary's tactics: she's the one that lost....
(Score: 5, Touché) by isostatic on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:31PM (9 children)
In France, the person with the most votes wins the election. Crazy I know
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:57PM
That's actually not true of many of our elections, even with the presidential elections it's a stretch given the turn based nature. And to be on turn 1 you need 500 signatures from already elected officials (with more annoying rules).
(Score: 3, Touché) by hemocyanin on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:50PM (7 children)
FYI, Clinton won 48% of the vote, meaning 52% of voters did not vote for her. So while it is true she won a larger plurality than Trump did, she did not win most of the votes -- the opposite is true and most people did NOT vote for her (myself included -- I'm in that Green 1%): http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php [uselectionatlas.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)
> So while it is true she won a larger plurality than Trump did, she did not win most of the votes
That's not what isostatic said.
He said the person with the most votes wins.
Your post is a hillary derangement aftershock.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:24AM (1 child)
So in a twelve way race, if a person got 15% of the vote, and the other 11 shared the remainder in such a way as to not exceed 15%, THAT person should be the winner in your view?
As others have pointed out, if there is no majority winner, there should be a run-off. HRC failed to get a majority and those 6.1% who voted 3rd party or write in, might not be the staunch HRC supporters you imagine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:32AM
So in a twelve way race, if a person got 15% of the vote, and the other 11 shared the remainder in such a way as to not exceed 15%, THAT person should be the winner in your view?
Define "should."
I don't think that slavery-holdover electoral college should determine the winner.
You just can't get past your hillary fixation. Get over it. Your witch lost.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:38PM (3 children)
France has a more sensible situation, where the lead two candidates after round 1 (if nobody gets 50%) get through to round 2. This allows the public to vote for their favoured candidate without worrying about sabotaging the normal one.
There were 4 or 5 candidates with a good shot in round 1, and another half-dozen on the paper. In this case there were two crazies on the round 1 ballot that had a good chance, so it could have been bad with a choice between Le Pen and Melenchon into round two, but either way it's better than the spoiler effect we so often see. The US should consider doing something similar to break this crazy two-party divide-and-conquer system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:01PM
Fixed with help from a guy from Sheffield in the UK. He's a former toilet cleaner which, no matter if you agree with his positions or not, is an undeniably excellent qualification for political commentary. You're welcome ;)
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:03AM (1 child)
Isn't it funny that the first argument raised against changing the US electoral system is cost?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:06AM
You mean how you were the first and only person to raise any argument against changing the US electoral system?
Yeah, funny you mentioned it.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:59AM (3 children)
I don't think anyone from the Democratic Party denied that the leaked e-mails were genuine, as Mr. Macron has:
In a statement, the Macron campaign said the hackers had mixed fake documents along with authentic ones, “to sow doubt and misinformation.”
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:14AM (2 children)
probably spelling her name wrong, but whatever
Every time she opened her mouth to say that the
emails were fake, she was shot down with DKIM
digital signatures. For the email to be fake,
Google itself would have had to have been hacked.
(an inside job probably, unless you think there
is a general-purpose quantum computer that can
crack giant RSA-style crypto problems)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:34AM (1 child)
A huge number of emails were not DKIM verifiable.
I can't remember if it was one third or two thirds.
But, either way it was not an insignificant number.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 07 2017, @08:47AM
I had missed the story. One e-mail was enough:
Brazile said that she did not know of any debate questions in advance [...] evidence that undermines Brazile’s denial has emerged by way of a standard email verification method known as DomainKeys Identified Mail, or DKIM, which indicates that the WikiLeaks-provided message sent by Jennifer Palmieri on March 12 from her Hillaryclinton.com account is not forged. [...] Salon has verified that the DKIM signature from the message provided by WikiLeaks indicates that the message was indeed sent by the Hillaryclinton.com domain. [...] Representatives for Donna Brazile and the DNC have not responded to Salon’s repeated requests for comment [...]
-- https://www.salon.com/2016/10/28/dnc-chair-donna-brazile-passed-a-debate-question-to-hillary-clintons-campaign-in-march-evidence-suggests/ [salon.com]
other reports:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/21/heres-cryptographic-proof-that-donna-brazile-is-wrong-wikileaks-emails-are-real/ [dailycaller.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/24/tech-blogger-finds-proof-dnc-chiefs-emails-werent-doctored-despite-claims.html [foxnews.com] (I couldn't read this one.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by srobert on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:46PM (5 children)
If he loses to Le Pen, he can blame Vladimir Putin. Where have I seen this before?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:20PM
The Red Herrrings *ahem* sorry, I mean the Red Hackers strike again!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:46PM
He was to stupid to put garlic around his email server. My Romanian advisers are the best ;-)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:29PM (2 children)
Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Viktor Orban, and the other populists have less of Vladimir Putin and themselves to thank and more of Angela "Bowl-cut Bulldog" Merkel's batshit-insane Islam-first refugee policy.
It still boggles my mind why such an advanced group of societies would so willingly commit suicide and reduce themselves to the third-world. Merkel and the UN have to be in on it.
Anyway, let's hope for a Le Pen win. I had no problems with a European Union but if they want to be so self-destructive then let the few sane ones the hell out and throw all the refugees into Germany and Belgium until the native population revolts. Actually, Europe should take all of its Islamic "refugees" and forcibly relocate them into Israel. Isn't it about time Israel take on a fair share of diversity?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
Are they "refugees" if their interest is entirely economic rather than simply running for their lives? It isn't just Israel but just about everywhere outside of Europe that refuses to help.
You are correct though, that the forced welcome mat for newcomers is largely the reason for Europe's tilt to the right. The UK would not have voted to leave if they could have simply turned off the spigot.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:03AM
> Are they "refugees" if their interest is entirely economic rather than simply running for their lives?
If they are going to stave at home then they are running for their lives.
> The UK would not have voted to leave if they could have simply turned off the spigot.
And yet brexit made no significant difference. [theguardian.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:44PM (11 children)
Oh these leaks, oh these evil leaks. The problem is that you found out by these leaks, not my wrongdoing. When will you plebs understand that! Now fake media will tell you that the leaked contents are fake and you must believe them because they have patent rights to truth from the Ministerium. These bad Russians did this because I have not pissed off a lot of my countrymen.
Now we can all pretend it didn't happen because leaks is just a social construction. And ignorance is knowledge!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Sulla on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:28PM (9 children)
I really wish that poor people could use this as a defence in court too
Judge: You stand accused of drunk driving and neglegent homicide
Person: Yeah but you didn't know about it until someone leaked my car's computer records
Judge: Oh well then nevermind, case dismissed
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:19PM (8 children)
I really wish that poor people could use this as a defence in court too
It literally is a defense in court.
Its called "fruit of the poisonous tree." [wikipedia.org]
You might say, "that's not the same, that only applies when someone acts on behalf of law enforcement."
Well, if LePen's campaign coordinated in any way with these people - not just knowing about the hack but simply working with them in any way [euobserver.com], then that is the same thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @06:48PM (7 children)
Not if your wiki link is to be believed:
An amateur posted some fake documents on /pol/ just before the last TV debate. These were easily debunked by the fact the pdf's consisted of separate layers. Le Pen obviously heard the early rumours and referenced it in a televised debate while Macron threatens to sue for defamation. Then, hours before French law prohibits campaigning prior to an election we get an actual email leak. Marcon confirms and says the emails are mixed with fakes, how could he possibly know that in advance? [twimg.com] Did he leak the trove himself or does he just have staffers on standby to write fake emails about "masturbating to sink noises"?
Anyone?
(Score: 2, Troll) by Sulla on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:13PM
It was probably the traditional "everything that doesn't support my claim is fake news".
I imagine he learned it from the book "Everyone I don't like is a Russian hacker, a child's guide to avoiding responsibility" by HRC.
This post is fake news.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:55PM (3 children)
> Not if your wiki link is to be believed:
Sorry, I didn't realize we were only talking about european courts.
Since we are writing in english on a website that is primarily american I thought we were talking about english common law, not continental.
> Anyone?
Sounds like you've got yourself a great conspiracy.
I wonder why the news isn't talking about such an obvious give away?
Must be because the media is in on the conspiracy.
Or you can't read french and are just parroting some bullshit you found on the derpweb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:55PM (2 children)
Well, much as I hate to be the one to break this to you; France is in Europe!
So your inference is that any investigation concerning an election in France should be conducted according to US or English common law?
I wonder... [france24.com]
I can understand enough to get the bits about binge watching Doctor Who and masturbating. [twimg.com] I also question why incriminating metadata has been
insertedleft intothe documents. [twitter.com] Guess it's just all a personal, whacked-out conspiracy theory tho?(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @01:59AM (1 child)
Well, much as I hate to be the one to break this to you; France is in Europe!
Your dogged insistence on an unrelated fact suggests you aren't so much interested in informative discussion as in personal validation.
All your rando non-sequitur links suggest a tenuous grip on reality.
Please go masturbate in private.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:25AM
In your own words:
Remarkable. Have you ever been formally diagnosed with BDP?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:24AM (1 child)
The expensive business copy/print/scan/fax
machines generate some pretty insane PDF files.
Given text over a blurry colorful background
scene, the machines will create two layers.
The background is compressed as a color image,
having had the text kind of interpolated away.
The text is on-the-fly turned into a custom font.
BTW, this is the source of the Xerox bug that
was changing numbers in documents when run on
a high compression setting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:41AM
Does not explain the fakery in this case, take a look for yourself. The only piece of text lacking jpeg compression artefacts is the first name in the handwritten signature. [france24.com] Would an OCR process not have detected a monospace sans first?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:09AM
I'm going to assume that you're being sarcastic. I'm also going to assume that the "wrongdoing" you're referring to is not the break-in, but something Mr. Macron or his party supposedly did that has come to light because of this attack. The article says:
“It will take to time to sift through it all, but at first glance, they seem to be utterly mundane,” Numerama said after analyzing the data.
Assuming some of the leaked documents are real, En Marche! (Macron's party) should have taken better care of its data. Are you saying that that rises to the level of "wrongdoing"? If not, what's the wrongdoing on the part of En Marche! or Macron?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:42PM (2 children)
you mean if people don't want to live in north africa meets lybia and le pen wins? that's what will ruin democracy? Not the biological weapons being sent into their country to destroy it from within? people see through your lies. you will be held accountable.
every time you stupid media whores mention her, it's "far right" and mackerel is "centrist". centrist means whore. you're going to find out what far right is when people start killing the media. i won't pity you pieces of shit either. Nobody except the treasonous governments you shill for deserve it more. you know you're voting for the better candidate when the whole media is against them. they may not be ideal but at least the media/bankster scum isn't running interference for them.
oh noes, how will the french rule themselves without some career thieves telling them what to do from brussels. now some french thieves will have to ruin France.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:32AM (1 child)
Relax, over 60% of people are so feeble minded that they believe anything. Ask them to fuck off to Africa if they want to live in those conditions and they enter instant denial mode because they cannot shake their conditioning.
There's a movie about this due any time now. [imgix.net]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 07 2017, @02:21AM
I find your concern over weapons of mass destruction being brought from North Africa to France hypocritical.
A compensation scheme for victims of France’s nuclear tests exists, but it has made payouts to only 17 people. The majority of those were residents of French Polynesia, where France relocated its nuclear testing campaign after leaving Algeria [...]
When France finally left, it buried a range of contaminated objects [...] But Saharan winds later swept away the sand covering these [...]
Southern Algerians — the vast majority of whom were never informed by the French about residual radiation hazards and in some cases the testing dates — began stripping the items for resources.
[...]
[...] France’s failure to disclose to local residents the extent of contamination in surrounding areas positioned them for decades of ignorance [...]
-- http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/1/algerians-suffering-from-french-atomic-legacy-55-years-after-nuclear-tests.html [aljazeera.com]