PARIS — French authorities on Tuesday accused Russia’s most high-profile hacking group of orchestrating cyberattacks on President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 election campaign.
This is the first time France has publicly accused Moscow of being behind the affair known as “Macron leaks,” which resulted in the disclosure of thousands of documents that belonged to the then-candidate’s campaign team.
A statement from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Russia’s intelligence service, the GRU, has been carrying out attacks for several years against French interests. The unit accused of carrying out the attacks was the infamous APT28, also known as Fancy Bear. That group has previously been sanctioned by the EU for hacking the German Bundestag in 2015. It has also been tied to the hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee in 2016 and email accounts belonging to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party in 2022 and 2023.
The French ministry said that the hacking group was used “to target or compromize a dozen French entities” since 2021, and was also being used to put pressure on Ukraine’s infrastructure.
France’s cybersecurity agency said in a paper that French ministerial agencies were targeted as well as various private sector actors, including in the finance and aerospace sectors.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot posted a message on X saying France “observes, blocks and fights its adversaries,” along with a video about the “silent war” waged by Russia against France.
It is rare for the French government to call out perpetrators of cyberattacks on its territory by name.
In recent weeks, though, Macron has upped the rhetoric against Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a bid to pile the pressure on ceasefire talks between the U.S and Russia.
Last week, Macron called on Putin to “stop lying” on his desire to peacefully end the war in Ukraine in an impassioned exchange with reporters. Previously, the French president also warned U.S. President Donald Trump that Putin was playing games at the end of an international summit in Paris.
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