Tag Archives: Hacking

U.S. electors expected to officially confirm Trump victory

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a USA Thank You Tour event in Hershey, Pennsylvania, U.S

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Electoral College is expected on Monday to officially select Republican Donald Trump as the next president in a vote that is usually routine but takes place this year amid allegations of Russian hacking to try to influence the election.

At meetings scheduled in every state and the District of Columbia, the institution’s 538 electors, generally chosen by state parties, will cast official ballots for president and vice president.

It is highly unlikely the vote will change the outcome of the Nov. 8 election, which gave the White House to Trump after he won a majority of Electoral College votes. The popular vote went to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

But the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee in an attempt to sway the election for Trump has prompted Democrats to urge some electors not to vote as directed by their state’s popular ballot.

The leaked emails disclosed details of Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street, party infighting and inside criticism about Clinton’s use of a private server to send emails while U.S. secretary of state. The disclosures led to embarrassing media coverage and prompted some party officials to resign.

Trump and his team dismiss intelligence claims of Russian interference, accusing Democrats and their allies of trying to undermine the legitimacy of his election victory.

Russian officials have denied accusations of interfering in the election.

On Sunday, Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, said it was an open question whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia about the emails, an allegation that Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, denied. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators called for a special committee probe of cyber attacks by Russia and other countries.

The number of Electoral College electors equals the number of representatives and senators in Congress, with each state receiving a share roughly proportional to its population size.

When voters go to the polls to cast a ballot for president, they are actually choosing a presidential candidate’s preferred slate for their state.

A candidate must secure 270 votes to win. Trump won 306 electors from 30 states.

The electors convene meetings in each state to cast ballots about six weeks after each presidential election.

If no candidate reaches 270 in the Electoral College, the president is chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives – currently controlled by Republicans.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Exclusive: Top U.S. spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking – sources

Padlock with the word hack, a representation of cyber attacks

By Mark Hosenball and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

The position of the ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as “ridiculous” in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks.

Trump’s rejection of the CIA’s judgment marks the latest in a string of disputes over Russia’s international conduct that have erupted between the president-elect and the intelligence community he will soon command.

An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

“ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent,” said one of the three U.S. officials. “Of course they can’t, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA’s analysis – a deductive assessment of the available intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said.

The ODNI, headed by James Clapper, was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the attacks. The commission, which identified major intelligence failures, recommended the office’s creation to improve coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies.

In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against American political organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Democratic President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks.

Reports of the assessment by the CIA, which has not publicly disclosed its findings, have prompted congressional leaders to call for an investigation.

Obama last week ordered intelligence agencies to review the cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the presidential election and to deliver a report before he turns power over to Trump on Jan. 20.

The CIA assessed after the election that the attacks on political organizations were aimed at swaying the vote for Trump because the targeting of Republican organizations diminished toward the end of the summer and focused on Democratic groups, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

Moreover, only materials filched from Democratic groups – such as emails stolen from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman – were made public via WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, and other outlets, U.S. officials said.

“THIN REED”

The CIA conclusion was a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked,” one of the three officials said on Monday.

“(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” the official added.

Republican Senator John McCain said on Monday there was “no information” that Russian hacking of American political organizations was aimed at swaying the outcome of the election.

“It’s obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns,” McCain said. “But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of our election and that’s why we need a congressional investigation,” he told Reuters.

McCain questioned an assertion made on Sunday by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, tapped by Trump to be his White House chief of staff, that there were no hacks of computers belonging to Republican organizations.

“Actually, because Mr. Priebus said that doesn’t mean it’s true,” said McCain. “We need a thorough investigation of it, whether both (Democratic and Republican organizations) were hacked into, what the Russian intentions were. We cannot draw a conclusion yet. That’s why we need a thorough investigation.”

In an angry letter sent to ODNI chief Clapper on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he was “dismayed” that the top U.S. intelligence official had not informed the panel of the CIA’s analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBI’s assessment.

Noting that Clapper in November testified that intelligence agencies lacked strong evidence linking Russian cyber attacks to the WikiLeaks disclosures, Nunes asked that Clapper, together with CIA and FBI counterparts, brief the panel by Friday on the latest intelligence assessment of Russian hacking during the election campaign.

(Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Jonathan Oatis)

FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails

Password on Computer Screen

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A last-ditch effort in the Senate to block or delay rule changes that would expand the U.S. government’s hacking powers failed Wednesday, despite concerns the changes would jeopardize the privacy rights of innocent Americans and risk possible abuse by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden attempted three times to delay the changes, which will take effect on Thursday and allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, potentially even overseas. His efforts were blocked by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican.

The changes will allow judges to issue warrants in cases when a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnet.

Magistrate judges can currently only order searches within the jurisdiction of their court, which is typically limited to a few counties.

In a speech from the Senate floor, Wyden said that the changes to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure amounted to “one of the biggest mistakes in surveillance policy in years.”

The government will have “unprecedented authority to hack into Americans’ personal phones, computers and other devices,” Wyden said.

He added that such authority, which was approved by the Supreme Court in a private vote earlier this year, but was not subject to congressional approval, was especially troubling in the hands of an administration of President-elect Trump, a Republican who has “openly said he wants the power to hack his political opponents the same way Russia does.”

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana also delivered speeches voicing opposition to the rule changes.

The U.S. Justice Department has pushed for the changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure for years, arguing they are procedural in nature and the criminal code needed to be modernized for the digital age.

In an effort to address concerns, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell wrote a blog post this week arguing that the benefits given to authorities from the rule changes outweighed any potential for “unintended harm.”

“The possibility of such harm must be balanced against the very real and ongoing harms perpetrated by criminals – such as hackers, who continue to harm the security and invade the privacy of Americans through an ongoing botnet, or pedophiles who openly and brazenly discuss their plans to sexually assault children,” Caldwell wrote.

A handful of judges in recent months had dismissed evidence brought as part of a sweeping FBI child pornography sting, saying the search warrants used to hack suspects’ computers exceeded their jurisdiction.

The new rules are expected to make such searches generally valid.

Blocking the changes would have required legislation to pass both houses of Congress, then be signed into law by the president.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz, editing by G Crosse)

Russian hackers accused of post-election attacks on U.S. think tanks

padlock graphic

By Jim Finkle and Dustin Volz

(Reuters) – A Russian hacking group began attacking U.S.-based policy think tanks within hours of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, according to cyber experts who suspect Moscow is seeking information on the incoming administration.

Three cyber security firms told Reuters that are tracking a spear-phishing campaign by a Russian-government linked group known as Cozy Bear, which is widely suspected of hacking the Democratic Party ahead of the election.

“Probably now they are trying to rush to gain access to certain targets where they can get a better understanding on what is going on in Washington after the election and during the transition period,” said Jaime Blasco, chief scientist with cyber security firm AlienVault.

Targets included the Council for Foreign Relations, said Adam Segal, a security expert with the think tank. His colleagues include former U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and former Reagan administration State Department official Elliott Abrams.

Representatives with the Russian Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment. Moscow has strongly denied that it was behind the hacks.

Spear-phishing campaigns use malware-tainted emails to infect computers of carefully selected staff at target organizations. They typically appear to be from people whom the victims know and on subjects of interest to them.

Some of the emails appeared to be from Harvard University under the subject line, “Why American Elections are flawed,” according to Washington-based cyber security firm Volexity.

The attacks began as the Obama administration was weighing if and how it might respond in its final two months to a series of high-profile hacks on Democratic Party organizations that U.S. intelligence officials have publicly blamed on Moscow.

A former senior Obama administration official said on Thursday that the White House had decided to take action against Russia after the election but no decision had been made on exactly how to respond.

Options included U.S. prosecutors indicting Russians believed to be behind the attacks, applying new economic sanctions against Moscow and the United States launching a retaliatory cyber attack against Russia, said the former official who asked not to be named.

White House officials feared that retaliating before the election could have led Russia to launch a major cyber attack on the United States that would have disrupted the banking system, power grid or internet service. But they said administration officials had decided that the United States needed to show after the election that it would respond to state-sponsored cyber attacks, said the former official.

Trump has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the attacks. He has yet to fill key national security posts, which makes it difficult to assess how his administration might handle the issue.

Harvard’s chief information security officer, Christian Hamer, warned staff about the attacks on Thursday afternoon, saying that federal law enforcement was investigating.

He said some of the emails used in the campaign appeared as if they were sent from members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, using the school’s branding.

An FBI representative declined comment.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Dustin Volz in Washington. Additional reporting by David Rohde in New York and Steve Holland in Washington.; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. vote authorities warned to be alert to Russian hacks faking fraud: officials

Sample ballot

By David Rohde and Mark Hosenball

(Reuters) – U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are warning that hackers with ties to Russia’s intelligence services could try to undermine the credibility of the presidential election by posting documents online purporting to show evidence of voter fraud.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said however, that the U.S. election system is so large, diffuse and antiquated that hackers would not be able to change the outcome of the Nov. 8 election.

But hackers could post documents, some of which might be falsified, that are designed to create public perceptions of widespread voter fraud, the officials said.

They said that they did not have specific evidence of such a plan, but state and local election authorities had been warned to be vigilant for hacking attempts.

On Oct. 7, the U.S. government formally accused Russia for the first time of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations to interfere with the election process.

U.S. officials familiar with hacking directed against American voting systems said evidence indicates that suspected Russian government-backed hackers have so far tried to attack voter registration databases operated by more than 20 states. Tracing the attacks can be difficult but breaches of only two such databases have been confirmed, they said.

The officials said there is no evidence that any hackers have succeeded in accessing equipment or databases used to record votes. Many states use systems that would be difficult to hack or defraud, including paper ballots which initially are tallied by machines.

U.S. elections are run by state and local officials, not the federal government. On Nov. 8, votes will be cast in hundreds of thousands of polling stations in 9,000 different jurisdictions, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State.

The U.S. officials declined to comment on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s contention that the election is being “rigged.” Trump said in the third and final presidential debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night that he would not say until the election results were known whether or not he would accept the outcome.

Trump and his campaign officials have repeatedly said that the potential for voter fraud remains high but they have not provided any evidence.

On Thursday, Trump said he would accept the results of the election “if I win.” He said he reserved the “right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result.”

Clinton supporters said Trump is unwittingly aiding an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to undercut the credibility of the vote. Washington and Moscow are at odds over several issues, from Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict, the war in Syria and cyber attacks.

“Trump does not even know he is being manipulated,” said Michael Morell, a former deputy CIA director who has endorsed Clinton. “Trump is an unwitting agent of Putin.”

(Reporting By David Rohde in New York and Mark Hosenball; in Washington; editing by Grant McCool)

‘No doubt’ Russia behind hacks on U.S. election system: senior Democrat

Vice Presidential debate in Virginia

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior Democratic lawmaker said Sunday he had “no doubt” that Russia was behind recent hacking attempts targeting state election systems, and urged the Obama administration to publicly blame Moscow for trying to undermine confidence in the Nov. 8 presidential contest.

The remarks from Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, come amid heightened concerns among U.S. and state officials about the security of voting machines and databases, and unsubstantiated allegations from Republican candidate Donald Trump that the election could be “rigged.”

“I have no doubt [this is Russia]. And I don’t think the administration has any doubt,” Schiff said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

Schiff’s call to name and shame the Kremlin came a week after Trump questioned widely held conclusions made privately by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia is responsible for the hacking activity.

“It could be Russia, but it could also be China,” Trump said during a televised debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. “It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

On Saturday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said hackers have probed the voting systems of many U.S. states but there is no sign that they have manipulated any voting data.

Schiff said he doubted hackers could falsify vote tallies in a way to affect the election outcome. Officials and experts have said the decentralized and outdated nature of U.S. voting technology makes such hacks more unlikely.

But cyber attacks on voter registration systems could “sow discord” on election day, Schiff said. He further added that leaks of doctored emails would be difficult to disprove and could “be election altering.”

The National Security Agency, FBI and DHS all concluded weeks ago that Russian intelligence agencies conducted, directed or coordinated all the major cyberattacks on U.S. political organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, and individuals, a U.S. official who is participating in the investigations said on Sunday.

However, the official said, White House officials have resisted naming the Russians publicly because doing so could result in escalating cyberattacks, and because it is considered impossible to offer public, unclassified proof of the allegation.

Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate intelligence committee, said last month they had concluded Russian intelligence agencies were “making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election.”

(Reporting by Dustin Volz and John Walcott; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

FBI Probes Hacks targeting phones of Democratic Party officials

The headquarters of the Democratic National Committee is seen in Washington,

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI is investigating suspected attempts to hack mobile phones used by Democratic Party officials as recently as the past month, four people with direct knowledge of the attack and the investigation told Reuters.

The revelation underscores the widening scope of the U.S. criminal inquiry into cyber attacks on Democratic Party organizations, including the presidential campaign of its candidate, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

U.S. officials have said they believe those attacks were orchestrated by hackers backed by the Russian government, possibly to disrupt the Nov. 8 election in which Clinton faces Republican Party candidate Donald Trump. Russia has dismissed allegations it was involved in cyber attacks on the organizations.

The more recent attempted phone hacking also appears to have been conducted by Russian-backed hackers, two people with knowledge of the situation said.

Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives had no immediate comment, and a Clinton campaign spokesman said they were unaware of the suspected phone hacking.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) did not respond to a request for comment. An official of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) said that nobody at the organization had been contacted by investigators about possible phone hacking.

Interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile told CNN: “Our struggle with the Russian hackers that we announced in June is ongoing – as we knew it would be – and we are choosing not to provide general updates unless personal data or other sensitive information has been accessed or stolen.”

FBI agents had approached a small number of Democratic Party officials to discuss concerns their mobile phones may have been compromised by hackers, people involved said. It was not clear how many people were targeted by the hack or whether they included members of Congress, a possibility that could raise additional security concerns for U.S. officials.

‘OFFICE BRAIN’

If they were successful, hackers could have been able to acquire a wide range of data from targeted cellphones, including call data, text messages, emails, photos and contact lists, one person with knowledge of the situation said.

“In a sense, your phone is your office brain,” said Bruce Schneier, a cyber security expert with Resilient, an IBM company, which is not involved in the investigation. “It’s incredibly intimate.”

“Anything that’s on your phone, if your phone is hacked, the hacker can get it.”

The FBI has asked some of those whose phones were believed to have hacked to turn over their phones so that investigators could “image” them, creating a copy of the device and related data.

U.S. investigators are looking into whether hackers used data stolen from servers run by Democratic organizations or the private emails of their employees to get access to cellphones, one person said.

Hackers previously targeted servers used by the DNC, the body that sets strategy for the party, and the DCCC, which raises money for Democrats running for seats in the House of Representatives, officials have said.

Clinton said during Monday’s presidential debate there was “no doubt” Russia has sponsored hacks against “all kinds of organizations in our country” and mentioned Russian President Vladimir Putin by name.

“Putin is playing a really tough, long game here. And one of the things he’s done is to let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files, to hack into personal files, hack into the Democratic National Committee,” Clinton said.

Trump countered that there was no definitive proof that Russia had sponsored the hacks of Democratic organizations.

“I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC,” he said. “It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people.”

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Grant McCool)

Probe of leaked U.S. NSA hacking tools examines operative’s ‘mistake’

The logo of the U.S. National Security Agency

By Joseph Menn and John Walcott

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. investigation into a leak of hacking tools used by the National Security Agency is focusing on a theory that one of its operatives carelessly left them available on a remote computer and Russian hackers found them, four people with direct knowledge of the probe told Reuters.

The tools, which enable hackers to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems from vendors such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet Inc, were dumped onto public websites last month by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.

The public release of the tools coincided with U.S. officials saying they had concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible for hacking political party organizations in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election. On Thursday, lawmakers accused Russia of being responsible.

Various explanations have been floated by officials in Washington as to how the tools were stolen. Some feared it was the work of a leaker similar to former agency contractor Edward Snowden, while others suspected the Russians might have hacked into NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

But officials heading the FBI-led investigation now discount both of those scenarios, the people said in separate interviews.

NSA officials have told investigators that an employee or contractor made the mistake about three years ago during an operation that used the tools, the people said.

That person acknowledged the error shortly afterward, they said. But the NSA did not inform the companies of the danger when it first discovered the exposure of the tools, the sources said. Since the public release of the tools, the companies involved have issued patches in the systems to protect them.

Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the former NSA person, who has since departed the agency for other reasons, left the tools exposed deliberately. Another possibility, two of the sources said, is that more than one person at the headquarters or a remote location made similar mistakes or compounded each other’s missteps.

Representatives of the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment.

After the discovery, the NSA tuned its sensors to detect use of any of the tools by other parties, especially foreign adversaries with strong cyber espionage operations, such as China and Russia.

That could have helped identify rival powers’ hacking targets, potentially leading them to be defended better. It might also have allowed U.S officials to see deeper into rival hacking operations while enabling the NSA itself to continue using the tools for its own operations.

Because the sensors did not detect foreign spies or criminals using the tools on U.S. or allied targets, the NSA did not feel obligated to immediately warn the U.S. manufacturers, an official and one other person familiar with the matter said.

In this case, as in more commonplace discoveries of security flaws, U.S. officials weigh what intelligence they could gather by keeping the flaws secret against the risk to U.S. companies and individuals if adversaries find the same flaws.

Critics of the Obama administration’s policies for making those decisions have cited the Shadow Brokers dump as evidence that the balance has tipped too far toward intelligence gathering.

The investigators have not determined conclusively that the Shadow Brokers group is affiliated with the Russian government, but that is the presumption, said one of the people familiar with the probe and a fifth person.

One reason for suspecting government instead of criminal involvement, officials said, is that the hackers revealed the NSA tools rather than immediately selling them.

The publication of the code, on the heels of leaks of emails by Democratic Party officials and preceding leaks of emails by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, could be part of a pattern of spreading harmful and occasionally false information to further the Russian agenda, said Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The dumping is a tactic they’ve been developing for the last five years or so,” Lewis said. “They try it, and if we don’t respond they go a little further next time.”

(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and John Walcott in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool)

Spy agencies concerned about possible U.S. election hacks: NSA chief

Eight year-old Emma Gray Bachrodt holds a "USA" sign while U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign voter registration event at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American intelligence agencies are concerned about reports that foreign governments may be attempting to undermine the Nov. 8 U.S. elections through cyber attacks, Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, said on Tuesday.

“We continue to be actively concerned,” Rogers told a Senate hearing, responding to a question from Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Marcel Lettre, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, testified that the government is taking any such activities “quite seriously” and said an “aggressive investigation” is under way.

McCain noted that one of the two states in which media reports said there was evidence of attempted Russian hacking was his home state, Arizona.

Some analysts have said Arizona, which recently has been reliably Republican in presidential elections, could be tilting more toward the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, this year. McCain, a Republican, himself is in a tougher than usual re-election fight.

Rogers said he could not provide specifics about spy agencies’ current assessment of the alleged hacking in a public setting. But he added, “I will say this, that it continues to be an issue of great focus … for the foreign intelligence community, attempting to generate insights into what foreign nations are doing in this area.”

Under further questioning, Rogers declined to characterize the activity as by a foreign nation-state.

Lettre said the government would adopt a policy for dealing with any such activity once it had the results of the investigation.

“The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security has an aggressive investigation underway,” Lettre said.

U.S. security officials have said that, starting last year, hackers infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee, Clinton’s presidential campaign and her party’s congressional fundraising committee.

U.S. officials said they have concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible, leading to calls by some Democrats and cyber security officials for the Obama administration to blame Russia publicly.

Kremlin officials have dismissed the allegations as absurd, but there is anxiety in Washington over the possibility that a foreign power might be using hacked information to meddle in the November elections.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Putin says he doesn’t know who hacked U.S. Democratic Party

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Vladivostok

By Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said he did not know who was behind the hacking of U.S. Democratic Party organizations but the information uncovered was important, Bloomberg news agency reported on Friday.

In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders, Putin said it might be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government.

“Does it even matter who hacked this data?” Putin said. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

“There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it,” he added. “But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”

The hacked emails, released by activist group WikiLeaks in July, appeared to show favoritism within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and prompted the resignation of the body’s chairwoman.

A computer network used by Clinton’s campaign, and the party’s fundraising committee for the U.S. House of Representatives were also hacked.

Clinton, who polls show as leading Donald Trump in the campaign for the U.S. presidential election in November, has said Russian intelligence services conducted a cyber attack against her party. Some officials have suggested Moscow is trying to influence the U.S. election.

Putin dismissed the allegations. “We have never interfered, are not interfering and do not intend to interfere in domestic politics,” he said.

“We will carefully watch what happens and wait for the election results. Then we are ready to work with any American administration, if they want to themselves.”

Relations between Russia and United States hit a post-Cold War low in 2014 over the Ukraine crisis, and Washington and Moscow have since clashed over diverging policies in Syria.

Obama said in August he would discuss the cyber attack with Putin if Russia was responsible, but it would not “wildly” alter the two countries’ relationship.

The U.S. election contest has been hard fought and frequently dominated by both candidates’ attitudes toward Russia.

Clinton has rounded on her Republican rival Trump for his perceived praise of Putin and what she says is an “absolute allegiance” to Russia’s foreign policy aims. Trump, in return, has said Clinton’s own close ties to the Russian president deserve greater scrutiny.

Putin said both candidates were using shock tactics and that playing “the anti-Russian card” was short-sighted.

“I wouldn’t like for us to follow their example,” he said. “I don’t think they are setting the best example.”

(Reporting by Katya Golubkova,; Writing by Jack Stubbs,; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Mark Trevelyan)