US accuses Russia of cyber attacks to disrupt election

NEW YORK (AFP) — US officials formally accused the Russian government of trying to “interfere” with the American presidential election, and vowed to respond at an undisclosed time and place.

The assertion against Russia comes with relations already frayed over NATO defenses and stalled efforts to end the bloody civil war in Syria.

A joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday was the first official accusation by Washington against Moscow in the spate of cyber attacks, although many analysts had said the hacks appeared to be from Russia.

A US administration official said Washington would respond to the cyber attacks, without offering details.

“We will take action to protect our interests, including in cyberspace, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing,” the official said.

“The public should not assume that they will necessarily know what actions have been taken or what actions we will take.”

The official statement said the US intelligence community “is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior- most officials could have authorized these activities,” it added.

The Kremlin labeled the allegations as “rubbish.”

“Every day ( President Vladimir) Putin’s website gets attacked by several tens of thousand of hackers,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agency Interfax.

“A lot of these attacks are traced to the territory of the USA, but we do not blame the White House or Langley each time.”

The American statement said the disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on WikiLeaks and other websites and by the online persona “Guccifer 2.0” were “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.”

“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process,” the statement said.

The statement, however, stopped short of accusing Russia in the recent cyber attacks on state election databases.

“Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election- related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company,” the statement said.