France has accused Russian military intelligence of carrying out a massive cyber-attack on Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential campaign in 2017 as well as several other recent major hacks, including on a TV station and an organisation involved in the Paris Olympics, reports The Guardian.
The French foreign ministry said for the first time on Tuesday that it was Russian hackers who had targeted Macron’s campaign team in 2017, adding that other Russian targets had included French media and an organisation involved in the 2024 Olympics.
Hours before the 2017 French presidential election, thousands of internal campaign emails from Macron’s team and other documents – some said to be false – were released online after the midnight deadline to end campaigning.
“Thousands of documents were stolen and disseminated in the hope of manipulating voters, but the manoeuvre failed to have any real impact on the electoral process,” said a foreign ministry video, shared online by the foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot.
The French foreign ministry also attributed other attacks to Russian military intelligence, including the 2015 hacking of the French public broadcast channel TV5Monde.