Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta has told the media he blames Russia for the hack into his emails, which Wikileaks has been releasing in troves for the last few days. He even said that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump knew about the hack and the leaks:
“I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Mr. Podesta told reporters aboard the Clinton campaign plane. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies,” he added, “who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.”
The FBI confirmed its agents have started an investigation into the hack.
Podesta did not confirm or deny “the authenticity of the emails,” but said he spoke with the FBI “as a victim” of a hacking job. From Politico:
“The FBI is aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these matters,” an FBI spokesperson said. “The cyber threat environment continues to evolve as cyber actors target all sectors and their data. The FBI takes seriously any allegations of intrusions, and we will continue to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”
He also believes Trump’s campaign knew about the hack:
Podesta said on Tuesday that the Trump campaign may have had advance knowledge of the leak. Particularly suspect, Podesta said, is Trump’s ally, provocateur and political operative, Roger Stone, who has confirmed he was in contact with Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. The founder of Wikileaks is a fugitive who has been openly critical of Clinton.“I think it is a reasonable assumption to, or at least a reasonable conclusion, that Mr. Stone had advance warning, and the Trump campaign had advance warning about what Assange was going to do,” said Podesta, who did not confirm the authenticity of the leaked emails.
He also said the FBI has included his hacked emails into the “broader investigation into the hacking of Democratic computers.”
The Democrats and government have been accusing Russia of trying to interfere with the presidential election:
“Russian interference in this election and apparently on behalf of Trump is, I think, of the utmost concern to all Americans, whether you’re a Democrat or independent or Republican,” Podesta said.
On Sunday, the Obama administration formally placed blame on our Cold War enemy for all the hacks that have occurred in 2016:
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.The agencies said some state election systems have been recently scanned and probed and that this action originated from servers operated by a Russian company. But the statement stopped short of definitively blaming the Russian government for that activity.
Just days before the Democrat National Committee, a Romanian hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 gave emails to Wikileaks that showed the DNC conspired from within to ruin Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) campaign against Hillary Clinton.
This caused the DNC to “quarantine” then-DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the Democrat convention. She later resigned a day before the convention kicked off while the DNC fired three top officials.
Last week, a Department of Homeland Security official said hackers targeted election systems in 21 states. This has led DHS to persuade states to take advantage of federal and private protection of its election systems.
Concerns over election security peaked in August when “hackers successfully infiltrated one state board of election and targeted another” in Illinois and Arizona.
The FBI provided “eight separate IP addresses” and thinks they may have been linked since the hackers used one address in bothe attacks. The department recognized one address since it “surfaced before in Russian criminal underground hacker forums.” Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect, told Yahoo News that “the method of attack on one of the state election systems — including the types of tools used by the hackers to scan for vulnerabilities and exploit them — appears to resemble methods used in other suspected Russian state-sponsored cyberattacks, including one just this month on the World Anti-Doping Agency.”
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