The campaign for Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton quickly pointed fingers at Russian Federation for the email scandal that broke Friday, just three days before the Democratic convention kicked off in Philadelphia.
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“The FBI is now investigating the DNC email hacking, due to suspicions that Russian Federation might be behind it”, the former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate wrote on his Facebook page.
“The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter”, the bureau said in a statement.
No one knows for sure whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing in the USA election.
“I don’t think it’s coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here, and I think that’s disturbing”, Mook told CNN’s “State of the Union”.
In an interview Monday with NBC, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, refused to confirm whether the almost 20,000 private emails his organization published came from a hack conducted by Russian state intelligence, saying it would be “immoral and unethical” to speculate about a source.
That brings us to Trump, the supposed direct beneficiary of Russia’s meddling, who has been under fire for his ties to the Russian government and his very public skepticism towards North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Experts say they no longer have any doubt that Russian Federation is trying to influence the outcome of November’s contest.
CrowdStrike have said they believe two hackers, Fancy Bear, which obtained access to the Democratic servers in April, and Cozy Bear, which first stole information in the summer of 2015, are controlled by GRU and FSB respectively.
It responded after cyber security experts and USA officials said there was evidence Russian Federation had engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails in order to influence the November 8 US presidential election.
This lack of hard evidence is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reluctant to say the Russian government is behind the leak of DNC emails. “I think it actually did succeed in doing that”. ‘I am simply going off what the reporting is telling us’. Diplomacy requires several other USA agencies to weigh in first, Trainor said.
In addition to Trump’s military stance, the Kremlin may also be looking favorably on the GOP nominee because he has said publicly that he admires Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s a growing issue that we have foreign bodies or other entities hacking into important institutions in this country and that’s the whole issue of cybersecurity, which is something as a nation we’ve got to pay a whole lot of attention to”, he said.
During an earlier event in Roanoke, Virginia, Trump labeled Clinton “low-energy”, the same characterization he lobbed at Republican rival Jeb Bush; attacked her running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia; and complained about the air conditioning in the hotel ballroom where he spoke.
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Even if the hack at the DNC fits in with wider Russian security policy that has used the media, covert cyber operations and support for anti-establishment groups in Europe as tools in information warfare, it is unclear whether Putin – even if he favors Trump – would sanction an effort to try to elect him.
