The US on Friday accused Russia of hacking US political Web sites and e-mail accounts in an effort to interfere with the upcoming US presidential election.
In a one-two punch, the US also accused Russia of war crimes in Syria.
Moscow dismissed the accusations, which significantly worsen US-Russia relations that had already deteriorated to their lowest point in years.
Russian officials called the hacking allegations “some kind of nonsense” and said the war crimes talk was simply an effort to divert attention from the US’ own failure to uphold a ceasefire in the war.
The White House declined to comment on whether the hacking accusation would trigger sanctions against Russia.
An official of US President Barack Obama’s administration said the US would respond “at a time and place of our choosing.”
The official said the public would not necessarily know what actions the US has already taken or will take against Russia involving cyberspace.
The official was not authorized to comment by name and requested anonymity.
“This is a huge deal,” said Michael Morell, former deputy and acting director of the CIA. “I can’t think of any time in our history where we have blamed another government for trying to interfere with our elections... This is unprecedented across the board.”
Late on Friday, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence accused Russia of hacking US political sites.
“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow,” a statement by the two agencies said. “The Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the US statement.
“Every day there are tens of thousands of attacks on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Web site. Many of the attacks can be traced to the US,” Peskov was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.
“We are not blaming the White House or Langley every time,” he said, referring to the Virginia city where the CIA is based.
Earlier on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Russian and Syrian military strikes against civilians and medical facilities in Syria should be investigated as war crimes.
The situation in Syria has dramatically deteriorated since the collapse of a US-Russia-brokered ceasefire two weeks ago.
“These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes,” Kerry said. “They’re beyond the accidental now, way beyond, years beyond the accidental. This is a targeted strategy to terrorize civilians and to kill anybody and everybody who is in the way of their military objectives.”
Kerry on Monday had cut off diplomatic discussions between Russia and the US over Syria hours after Putin suspended a US-Russia agreement on disposing weapons-grade plutonium.
On Wednesday, Putin suspended another agreement on research cooperation in the nuclear and energy sectors.
As for the hacking, federal officials were investigating cyberattacks at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Election data systems in at least two states were also breached.
US intelligence officials said some states have experienced scanning or probing of their election systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.
The US statement stopped short in attributing the activity to the Russian government and administration officials emphasized that it would be difficult for hackers to alter the results of the Nov. 8 election, because each US state runs its own election system.
Democratic Party officials in late April learned that their systems were attacked after discovering malicious software on their computers.
CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that investigated the incidents, said one of the groups identified in the Democratic National Committee attack, dubbed Cozy Bear, had previously infiltrated unclassified networks at the White House, the US Department of State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another group detected, called Fancy Bear, had targeted private and public-sector networks around the world since the mid-2000s. Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear are linked to Russia.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS