
U.S. Hacker Linked to Fake Macron Documents, Says Cybersecurity Firm - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-hacker-linked-to-fake-macron-documents-says-cybersecurity-firm-1494929136
======
jimrandomh
Two things happened in the French election. First, someone created a forged
document, purporting to show that Macron had a secret offshore bank account,
and published it on 4chan. (The forgery was poorly done, and was recognized
immediately). Second, someone hacked the Macron campaign's computers and
published all their emails. (Possibly with fake emails mixed in, though I
haven't heard of any specific emails from that dump being fake).

This article claims that the first of these, the forged document, was done by
Weev (aka Andrew Auernheimer). However, the second of these - the email data
dump - has not been attributed to Weev and was likely done by someone else.

~~~
GuiA
Isn't weev supposed to be at least somewhat technically competent? The first
leaked document seems to have been produced by someone with very little
knowledge of image manipulation, or what actually happens under the hood of
technology, given how trivial it was to prove that it was fake.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Weev is a high functioning polydrug abusing sociopath dedicated to short term
pleasure. Don't confuse yourself.

~~~
nyargh
Agreed. He has little to no actual skill, which made his conviction somewhat
of a joke as well.

------
daxorid
tl;dr: It's weev.

It will be interesting to see how, if at all, this changes the widely-held
APT28 attribution hypothesis.

~~~
dsl
Two different incidents:

\- State sponsored email hacking

\- A kid on 4chan faked a document

~~~
fixxer
Is the kid executing this purported forgery from his parents' basement?

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unclesaamm
Non-paywalled link:
[http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-
hacker-linked-to-fake-macron-documents-says-cybersecurity-firm-1494929136)

~~~
kristianc
Or Outline, for people without Facebook
[https://outline.com/zBTYT5](https://outline.com/zBTYT5)

~~~
agrahul
AFAIK, l.php does not require a Facebook account.

~~~
bigbugbag
it still requires to give away privacy and go to facebook.com

~~~
labster
That's cute, people thinking we still have privacy online. ISPs will be
selling your browsing history soon enough.

~~~
bigbugbag
You may have no online privacy, then too bad for you.

If you refer to the recent cancellation of a US law before it came into effect
that would have reverted ISP selling customer data. Well you got it backwards.
Anyways I'm not from the US and you'll be shocked to learn that I'm part of my
own federated ISP[1] and that each subscriber has a say and is aware of what
the ISP does, and privacy protection is a priority even when it is a
governmental or police probe.

[1]: [https://www.ffdn.org/](https://www.ffdn.org/)

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stupidhn
Keep this in mind when you read "Chinese" or "Russian" hacker and immediately
assume it's state sponsored...

~~~
snowpanda
Interesting to see people downvote you, just a week ago the top comment here
on HackerNews (on Macron winning), mentioned how there was "Russian metadata"
in the hack [1].

Just goes to show you how people will believe what benefits them and downvote
what's inconvenient.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14286630)

~~~
Analemma_
Put away the persecution fantasies, he's being downvoted because he's wrong.
There were two separate incidents here: weev is behind the phony finance
documents, _not_ the account hacks, which are still believed to be Russian in
origin.

~~~
yorwba
He is not wrong in general, though. Russia and China do have kids doing it for
the lulz, as well as criminal groups.

So if you have clues on the country of origin of an attack, you still need
additional evidence (such as methods used and choice of target) to be
reasonably sure of state sponsorship.

~~~
pygy_
Provided the Macron campaign had a competent chief security officer (coming
straight from the industry) and was paranoid about security, and given the
scale of the leak, it seems unlikely that it was the job of skiddies doing it
for the lulz.

~~~
bigbugbag
Macron campaign had a competent chief security officer ? Seems unlikely.

-edit- well then downvote me instead of providing a name and explanation that this guy was competent, macronleak was depicted as poor security practices and probably low level attacks[1]. Let's not forget that they got breached at least once beforehand during the campaign and the trend micro report[2] explained what to do to protect against these attacks which obviously was not applied (assuming the leak has not been orchestrated).

[1] [https://www.nextinpact.com/news/104217-edito-macronleaks-
ou-...](https://www.nextinpact.com/news/104217-edito-macronleaks-ou-eloge-
dune-meilleure-securite-et-chiffrement-echanges.htm) [2]
[https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/wp/wp-two-years-
of-p...](https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/wp/wp-two-years-of-pawn-
storm.pdf)

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SamUK96
I was reading some of the leaked emails. They are awful. Purchasing "legal
highs" off the dark web. Cocaine. All sorts of horrendous stuff.

I think the En Marche! leak has many similar properties to the DNC leaks. Once
many very incriminating emails were leaked, many "invested" parties jumped on
the opportunity to inject fakes to discredit the whole.

If I was Podesta or Macron, and a bunch of private emails were leaked to show
corruption, pedophilia, illegal drug use, etc., what would be my first port of
call? Discredit the authenticity with fakes.

