US segment of Trend Micro has confirmed that the recently held French elections were hacked by a group of hackers from Russia. The cyber security firm which has its head office in Japan said that attack was launched just 36 hours before French voters went to polls in a May 7th’17 runoff between Macron and his counterpart Marine Le Pen, who is being supported by Kremlin.
In April 2017, NSA warned their peers in France that its electoral database was vulnerable to hackers and the info could be made public. And as said the data was posted on a public platform as per a Reuter’s story.
Trend Micro confirmed yesterday that the words of the prediction from NSA were true as Fancy Bear- a well-known hacking group funded by Russian government did involve in such activity last week.
Trend Micro even confirmed the news that the cyber attack launched in this instance was similar to that of the one launched by the Democratic National Committee and on the private email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta.
Russia’s Fancy Bear has been in news from the end of last year when media reports emerged out that the US 2016 Polls were influenced by the interference of Russia President Vladimir Putin who favored Donald Trump’s win.
Though Trump put these allegations aside by saying that these rumors were just like a wild witch-hunt, Obama administration ordered a detailed probe in this issue.
In January this year, CIA and FBI confirmed that Trump’s win was favored by some foreign nation interference. But for obvious reasons, they never revealed the name of the nation which involved in the activity.
And on May 9th, 2017, FBI Director James Comey was fired by Donald Trump for making the probe on this issue public.
Now, Russia is facing strong allegations from the media that it has interfered in France elections and will also do the same in upcoming general elections in Germany and Britain.
Vladimir Putin is yet to react to this news and when he does, it will be updated in Cybersecurity Insiders as soon as possible.
