Macron French presidential campaign says it was hacked

The campaign says hackers dumped a mix of real and fake documents on the internet ahead of France's hotly contested election.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News

Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he's always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.

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Dara Kerr Former senior reporter

Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.

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Ian Sherr

Dara Kerr

May 5, 2017 4:54 p.m. PT

Emmanuel Macron, at a rally.
Getty Images

This latest hack may cause a case of deja vu and even make you shout "sacre bleu!"

French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron's campaign says it's been hacked, and a mix of allegedly real and fabricated emails and documents are being dumped on the internet late Friday.

Of course, this all happened a little more than a day before polls open for the French presidential election between Macron and Marine Le Pen. Macron's campaign said in a statement that this was clearly done to "sow doubt and misinformation."

The news comes more than a week after security researchers at Trend Micro said Macron's campaign had been targeted by hackers trying to trick staffers into giving up their passwords and allowing malicious software to infect their computers.

Of course, this isn't the first time the Russians have been accused of hacking an election: The US government said Russian hackers meddled in the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The Russian and French embassies in the US didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.