Macron hackers linked to group behind US election attack

Paris, May 8 (IANS) The hackers behind a "massive and coordinated" attack on the campaign of French President-elect Emmanuel Macron have been linked to the same Russian-affiliated group blamed for attacking the Democratic party shortly before the US election.

New York's Flashpoint Intelligence and Tokyo-based Trend Micro have shared intelligence that suggests the activities of the group, known variously as Advanced Persistent Threat 28, Fancy Bear and Pawn Storm, were the latest in a series of attacks aimed at influencing the outcome of elections, The Guardian reported on Monday.

On May 5, Macron's campaign announced he had been the target of a "massive and coordinated" hacking operation.

Around 14.5 gigabytes of emails, personal and business documents were posted to the text-sharing site Pastebin. The hackers had mixed fake documents with authentic ones "to create confusion and misinformation".

The group had ties with the GRU, the Russian military intelligence directorate.

Vitali Kremez, director of research at Flashpoint, said his review indicated APT28 was behind the leak.

APT28 last month registered decoy internet addresses to mimic the name of Macron's movement, En Marche!, which it probably used to send tainted emails to hack into the campaign's computers, Kremez said.

Those domains include onedrive-en-marche.fr and mail-en-marche.fr.

"If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the US presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome," The Guardian quoted Kremez as saying.

Trend Micro similarly identified links between the hacks, with the same organisation registering a phishing (attempt to obtain sensitive information by disguising as a trustworthy entity) address used in the Democratic National Convention hacks in April 2016 and the Macron address in March this year.

That organisation had also registered domain names with the apparent purpose of stealing details from Germany's CDU and KAS, and from Montenegrin MPs.

Macron, an independent centrist, won Sunday's runoff election against the far-right Marine Le Pen by a 66 per cent to 34 per cent margin.

A congratulatory statement from the Kremlin, which had been widely seen as backing Le Pen, urged Macron to work with Russia to "overcome mutual mistrust and unite to ensure international stability and security".