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| Campaigning has ended ahead of Sunday's vote |
The campaign of French presidential
candidate Emmanuel Macron says it has been the target of a "massive
hacking attack" after a trove of documents was released online.
The centrist will face off against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The documents were leaked on a file sharing website late on Friday.
The Macron camp condemned the leak minutes before the official campaigning period ended at midnight (22:00 GMT).
Candidates and the media now face restrictions until the polls close on Sunday evening, meaning Mr Macron cannot issue any more statements.
Opinion polls had indicated the former economy minister carried a lead of 20 percentage points or more over Ms Le Pen.
What was released?
About nine gigabytes of data were posted online by an anonymous user. The details are unclear so far, but Mr Macron's En Marche movement said internal campaign documents, including emails and financial data, had been taken in an "act of massive, co-ordinated hacking"."The leaked files were obtained several weeks ago by hacking personal and professional email accounts of several officials of the movement," it said in a statement.
The campaign said the documents showed only legitimate campaign activities. France's election authorities have warned media outlets against reporting on the contents of the leaked documents because of the restrictions now in place.
Who might be responsible?
That too remains unclear. The Macron camp has not blamed any specific party but said the hack clearly aimed to damage it and undermine French democracy, It compared it to the leak of Democratic Party emails in last year's US presidential election that was blamed on Russian hackers.Wikileaks, which published those emails, posted a link to the Macron documents on Twitter but implied it was not responsible.
Last month security experts from the company Trend Micro said that Russian hackers were targeting Mr Macron's campaign. Russia has denied that it is behind attacks aimed at Mr Macron.
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Mr Macron called the allegations "fake news and lies" and said some of the sites spreading them were "linked to Russian interests".
What else happened on the final day of campaigning?
Separate security alerts in and around Paris marred Friday's final scramble by the candidates to court voters.A suspected radical Islamist possessing weapons and a pledge of allegiance to IS was arrested north of the capital. And Greenpeace activists scaled the Eiffel Tower to unfurl a banner, sparking an emergency police meeting.
What is at stake on Sunday?
France's voters have rejected the two big political parties - the Socialists and the Republicans - that have governed for decades, Voters will be making a decision on France's future direction and on its place at the heart of the European Union.If they opt for liberal Emmanuel Macron, they will be backing a candidate who seeks EU reform as well as deeper European integration, in the form of a eurozone budget and eurozone finance ministers.