Far-right American supporters of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen have been linked to the massive hack of emails from her rival Emmanuel Macron.

The release of confidential data late on Friday had been widely blamed on Russian hackers, who were believed to be trying to help Ms Le Pen, the favoured candidate of President Putin.

But according to international think-tank the Atlantic Council, extreme supporters of President Trump were the first to circulate the emails, accounts and photos related to Mr Macron's political movement, En Marche!




US supporters of Marine Le Pen have been accused of hacking into Emmanuel Macron's emails 

Potentially compromising false information was also said to be on smart pastebin leecher v 0.1 download, pastebest.com,, a document-sharing site, according to Mr Macron's team. 

Analysis conducted by The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab published on Saturday found that the hashtag #MacronLeaks reached 47,000 tweets in three and a half hours after it was first used by Jack Posobiec, a writer in Washington for the far-right news organization The Rebel.

Posobiec's online biography said he coordinated grassroots organizing for a group that supported U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign.




RELATED ARTICLES

Previous

1

Next



Voting begins in crucial French presidential election with... Was Trump trying to establish a back-channel to Putin...



Share this article

Share


Posobiec's initial tweet on the Macron documents was retweeted fifteen times within one minute and 87 times in five minutes, Atlantic Council senior fellow Ben Nimmo wrote in a blog published on Medium.

Prolific Tweeter Posobiec said he did not operate bots and that he used his account to share a post he saw on 4chan.

Bots helped move the hashtag from the United States to France, according to Nimmo, where surveys show far-right leader Marine Le Pen trailing Macron by more than 20 points heading into Sunday's election.

French electoral law forbids candidates from commenting during Saturday and until polling stations close on Sunday.




The hack was widely blamed on Russian hackers but now the leak has been pinpointed on US fans of Marine Le Pen, pictured here with Russian President Vladimir Putin

The Macron leaks prompted swift alarm in the United States, where many believed Russian President Vladimir Putin was again trying to put his thumb on the scales of a Western election.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic emails during the U.S. election to benefit Republican Trump, who has been at times dismissive of those findings and resurfaced his claim earlier this week that China could have been responsible.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to Reuters that the Macron leak demonstrates the urgency of his panel's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in last year's U.S. election.

Vitali Kremez, of US-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoints, claimed that APT 28, a group linked to the Russian military intelligence directorate, was behind the Macron hack. 

Noting the Macron dump may contain fake documents mixed in with authentic material Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the leak may represent 'yet another dangerous escalation of cyber interference in a Western nation's democracy.'

The Kremlin has denied any involvement. 


Emmanuel MacronFranceDonald Trump