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US accuses Russia of cyber attacks | US accuses Russia of cyber attacks |
(35 minutes later) | |
US officials have formally accused Russia of cyber attacks against political organisations in order "to interfere with the US election". | US officials have formally accused Russia of cyber attacks against political organisations in order "to interfere with the US election". |
Recent hacked emails are "consistent with the methods and motivation of Russia-directed efforts", the Department of Homeland Security said. | |
Data revealing discussions within the Democratic Party was hacked earlier this year. | |
Some states reported "probing" attempts made on "election-related" systems. | |
However, officials said those attempts could not be directly linked to the Russian government. | |
A joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security said high-ranking officials at the Kremlin were almost certainly involved in the successful attacks. | |
"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," it said. | |
However, altering any actual ballots or election results would be "extremely difficult", they said, because of a decentralised system and multiple checks and balances. | |
A number of embarrassing emails have come to light during the 2016 election campaign. | |
In July, a hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the release of documents from the Democratic Party. | |
Gigabytes of files including emails and other documents that revealed the inner workings of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were taken. | |
At an early stage, many US officials linked the breach to Russia. At the time, Moscow denied any involvement and denounced the "poisonous anti-Russian" rhetoric from Washington. | |
The leaked emails appeared to show that Democratic Party officials were biased against Bernie Sanders in his primary race against Mrs Clinton. | |
The hack led to the resignation of the party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and sparked protests at the national convention in Philadelphia. |