Russia-Linked Hackers Target French Election

The same hackers who accessed the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last year also targeted the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, one of ii remaining candidates in the current French presidential election, co-ordinate to security firm Trend Micro.

SecurityWatch The group, known in the security community as Fancy Bear or Pawn Storm, amongst other code names, set upward a URL that masqueraded equally a Microsoft OneDrive account in gild to capture data from the Macron campaign, Trend Micro said in a report published on Tuesday.

The OneDrive phishing attempt, which started last month, used the URL "onedrive-en-marche.fr" to attempt to spoof users, although information technology's unclear whether or not it allowed the hackers to successfully breach the entrada'due south computers. The phishing try appears similar to the methods that hackers used last year to proceeds access to the DNC's computer systems.

"At that place are several things which suggest that the group backside the Macron hacking was likewise responsible for the DNC breach, for case," Rik Ferguson, vice president of Trend Micro'south security inquiry program, told the Washington Post. "We found similarities in the IP addresses and malware used in the attacks."

Trend Micro said Pawn Storm frequently targets victims like political parties and candidates that are at odds with Russian geopolitical interests. Crowdstrike, another security business firm that investigated the DNC hack, suggested last summer that the group, which information technology refers to as Fancy Bear, is aligned with GRU, Russian federation's war machine intelligence service.

Many of the group's phishing campaigns resemble the login screens of major email services with remarkable accurateness, according to Trend Micro's report. In addition to phishing, the group also relies on DNS attacks to gain access to victims' computers.

The group'southward most recent target, according to Trend Micro, is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German political think tank, which was hit with a phishing campaign on March 5.