Russian hackingRussia using hacking to influence 2016 elections: U.S.

The United States, in an official statement issued jointly today by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence (DNI), and a high-level official at Department of Homeland Security (DHS), officially accused Russia of trying to influence the 2016 U.S. elections by using Russian government hackers to steal and publish archived e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) this summer.

“The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the statement reads. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

Cyber experts familiar with Russian hacking methods – and the manner in which Russia has typically tried to deflect attention away from itself after other Russian hacking attempts have been discovered – have attributed the hacks of the Democratic Party to Russia from the start.

What did not help the Russian government’s deflection campaign was the fact that a hacker who called himself Guccifer 2.0, and who stepped forward to present himself as a Romanian individual who did the hacking of the Democratic Party on his own, agreed to be interview by Motherboard, but could not carry on a conversation in Romanian.

The Washington Post notes that this is the first official statement the U.S. intelligence community has made accusing Russia of trying to influence the 2016 elections. The Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has requested the intelligence community to investigate Russia’s efforts to influence the US election.

Lawmakers were quicker to react to the official statement. “All of us should be gravely concerned when a foreign power like Russia seeks to undermine our democratic institutions,” said Representative Adam Schiff (D-California), ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. “We must do everything in our power to guard against it.”

The statement by the DCI and DHS also refers to recent reports of attempted hacks into the voting systems and voter registration databases in twenty states, but says that the evidence about Russian government involvement in those hacks is not yet conclusive.

DNI and DHS stress, though, that the hacking are not likely directly to affect election results. “It would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion,” the statement reads. “This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place.”

“Nevertheless,” it continues, “DHS continues to urge state and local election officials to be vigilant.”