The U.S. intelligence community is formally accusing the Russian government of playing a role in email hacks aimed at casting the Democratic Party in an embarrassing light and influencing the presidential election.
In a statement issued today, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said this year’s email disclosures by DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks were consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the agencies said.
The statement also noted that most of the recent attempts to probe state-level election systems have been traced to computer servers operated by a Russian company. “However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government,” the federal agencies said.
