it warrants. well, new today, a hacking attack against the front-runner in the french presidential elections. hackers published documents stolen from emmanuel macron s e-mails. it came hours before a midnight deadline from campaigning, preventing him from responding. joining me is david ignatius. hi, good to be here. what s your initial take of all of this? my initial take is that it s not likely to have decisive effect on the french election. macron was well ahead in the latest poll taken after a debate on wednesday night. this poll showed him ahead 63-37 over marine le pen, the right-wing challenger. the material will be very hard for french media to in any way discuss, because there is a law in france basically blocking last-minute news revelations before the voting. it will be online.
tonight their time this story just took a very serious turn. it was just before the blackout deadline arrived. the blackout deadline arrives at midnight local time. just before that blackout deadline arrived, which shuts down all election related news and discussion in the french media. just before that midnight local time deadline tonight, macron campaign suffered a huge cyber attack. all of their internal stuff got posted online. their internal documents, internal e-mails. things like contracts, accounting documents, strategy documents, all apparently hacked off their campaign servers, all posted online at paste bin. which is one of these places you can post stuff anone mounsly. it s apparently about nine gigabytes worth of data. the campaign says most of it is, in fact, legitimate material that is authentic that was definitely stolen off their servers. but they say whoever posted it mixed in fake documentation as well alongside the real stuff, which is a hall mark of a well-run weap
matt, good morning. what has been the rehabilitation of this and hokd this potentially sway the election? good morning. it s not clear how this is going to actually throw the election in either way. but it does appear to be strategically timed, as you mention. it came just moments before a two-day long media blackout when politicians can t discuss politics and can t defend themselves. today, the presidential race that rattled france rattled again late last night. news of a last minute hacking attack, 9 gigabytes of data, thousands of e-mails and documents all stolen a few weeks ago from the front-runner emmanuel macron. this as the media enters a pre-election two-day media blackout. macron s campaign says it s meant to cause doubt and intimidation. suspicion is focused on are russia. a japanese cyber security form
influential country that s quaking at its foundations? even if you don t care about france, this election in france is an earthquake. it s an earthquake even if marine le pen does not win. the two main political parties in that country, their equivalent of democrats and republicans, those two parties have traded the president for 50 years. neither of those parties got a candidate into the runoff this time. they are also coping with russia and putin playing in their politics. vladimir putin is supporting le pen. russian brangs loaned her millions of euros. the wall street journal reports le pen s opponent, the centrist emanual macron has been targeted by an intensive, high-level hacking attack a cybersecurity firm according to
the two main political parties in that country, their equivalent of democrats and republicans, those two parties have traded the president for 50 years. neither of those parties got a candidate into the runoff this time. they are also coping with russia and putin playing in their politics. vladimir putin is supporting le pen. russian brangs loaned her millions of euros. the wall street journal reports le pen s opponent, the centrist emanual macron has been targeted by an intensive, high-level hacking attack a cybersecurity firm according to the wall street journal is due to publish a report tomorrow that will attribute that attack on macron to hackers from the kremlin. so russia obviously wants to