French presidential election candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign on Friday said that it had been a target of a "massive" computer hack, which leaked its campaign emails online just a day before the final round of the French elections.
Centrist candidate Macron, who will face off with far-right rival Marine Le Pen, is seen as a front-runner in France's crucial elections for its next leader.
The leak seems to be very similar to what the United States presidential elections candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign had seen last year. Clinton campaign's emails were hacked and released, which, Clinton recently said, was one of the reasons for the Democrat candidate's election loss to Republican candidate Donald Trump. US intelligence agencies have said that the hacks were conducted by Russian hackers, and that the Russian Kremlin could have been possibly involved.
There are reports doing the rounds that Russia is attempting to hack the French elections too to influence Marine Le Pen's win.
Reports state that around nine gigabytes of data was posted online by a user called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a document sharing site that allows anonymous posting. Reuters reports state that it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the hack, or if the data posted on the site was genuine.
The hack reportedly took place at midnight on Friday (2200 GMT).
Macron's political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) released a statement on Friday, confirming the hack. "The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinated hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information," the statement said.
French interior ministry officials refused to comment on the hacking, saying that French election rules forbid them from making any statement which could influence the elections.
The French presidential commission also released a statement stating that it would hold a meeting on Saturday, after Maron's campaign informed the committee about the hack and release of its confidential data.
The committee also warned the media against publishing details of the emails considering that the campaign has ended. It said that publishing the emails could lead to criminal charges, according to Reuters.
