Henk van Ess, member of the investigation team of Bellingcat, headed by Eliot Higgins about  9 gigabytes leak of emails and other data stolen from the computers of campaign workers of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.

What the heck is the hack?


its about  9 gigabytes leak of emails and other data stolen from the computers of campaign workers of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron,

 most likely by a hackers collective that has links to Russian intelligence, and immediately embraced by American "alt-right" Twitter accounts,.

Along with an army of pro-Kremlin bots they produced 47,000 tweets in just three and a half hours after the initial tweet, making it trending and giving it attention to the press.

The promise was  a deep insight in Emmanuel Macron’s “campaign emails,” showing evidence of offshore accounts, tax evasion, and  other shady activities a similar to the other leaks about high profile people.


So what did we find?

According to the files, drugs were paid in bitcoins and send to a campaign worker. But scrutinising the way these coins work, they work in blocks, the proof for this was fake. https://twitter.com/henkvaness/status/861276003166978049. The leak raises a basic question anyway: would someone use bitcoins for anonymity, and then have his drugs delivered at the front door of the Assemblée Nationale? 

In the metadata of the files cyrillic words (Russian) popped up and could be explained by that the leaker used a Russian version of Excel, https://twitter.com/henkvaness/status/860809075013144577

A Russian security contractor was also in the metadata https://twitter.com/henkvaness/status/860977820222324738

I found an amazing amount of personal data in #macronleaks not relevant to anyone but the person herself / himself https://twitter.com/henkvaness/status/861089751947988992


The data was structured in such way, that a hasty reader feels it hints to a big scandal. It doesn’t. It seems a random bunch of personal mails and documents, giving a wonderful insight in the bureaucratic way the campaign workers have to do their job. Some of them got a reprimande because they forgot to include an invoice for a cup of coffee. One struggled with a broken car, asking the campaign manager for money to repair the French made vehicle. 
 

Is there any evidence pointing to who responsible?

The hack seems part of a bigger plan, operation "Pawn Storm”: an cyber espionage group that made headlines with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_Bear, claims IT security company Trendmicro in https://media.scmagazine.com/documents/295/trend_micro-two-years-of-pawn-_73730.pdf

 
 Why is the sort of activity becoming more common around election time?

It’s an effective and relatively cheap method to hurt the candidate who is on the radar of Pawn Storm.

 
What does this mean for upcoming elections this year in Europe?

Expect this to be part of the cat and mouse game between the world powers. Cyber attacks and cyber disinformation has become a daily routine. I found social media boiler rooms all over the world, trying to influence opinions with fake bots.