United States intelligence agencies are investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the November elections with cyber-attacks created to damage American political institutions and foster public distrust in the political process, it has been reported. Although there is no “definitive proof” of a plan or intention of Russian action acting upon the American electoral system, there is a great concern in order to assess every possible risk that the elections may be exposed to in order to ensure voter confidence.
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The email hack, which included the theft of the DNC’s research on Republican rival Donald Trump, was likely to have been masterminded by the Russian government as part of a broader effort, according to unnamed DNC officials and researchers at IT security firm CrowdStrike cited by The Washington Post.
Experts have already linked a number of hacks – including the 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and exposed on WikiLeaks – to operations they believe are being orchestrated by the Russian government. Earlier in July, WikiLeaks released multiple hacked DNC emails detailing an organized sabotage of Bernie Sanders’ bid for the White House, which led to the ouster of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Russian Federation has denied that it carried out any cyberintrusions in the United States.
“This is something of concern for the [the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr]”, said Charles Allen, a former long-time CIA officer who has been briefed on some of the issues.
After Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ended a secure, 30-minute phone briefing by a top intelligence official recently, he was “deeply shaken”, according to an aide who was with Reid when he left the secure room at the FBI’s Las Vegas headquarters.
Russian election interference “is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results”, Reid wrote in a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FBI, last week, warned by issuing a statement confirming it has proofs that foreign hackers were able to hack database in Arizona and IL states.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Monday that she is concerned about “credible reports about Russian government interference in our elections”. Encryption, secured paper backups and secured backup computers are critical, he said.
Putin also recently told Bloomberg, “in order to influence the course of the USA elections, it’s necessary to have your finger on the pulse, and to get the specifics of domestic political life in the US”.
USA intelligence agencies indicated that they had “high confidence” the Russian government was behind the hack. He noted that electronic balloting from overseas is conducted by email, not through online voting machines.
Administration officials said they are weighing their response. But it won’t happen before the November elections, federal and local officials said. “And on a state level, Russian Federation has never done this”.
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The Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine have been subject to Russian cyberattacks and other hidden influence operations meant to disrupt those countries, officials said. In Western Europe, for instance, such Russian information operations have focused on the politically divisive refugee crisis.
