Kremlin Denies Hacking DNC’s Emails

Reuters reports:

The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed allegations Russia had hacked Democratic Party emails as “horror stories” dreamt up by U.S. politicians, saying it never interfered in other countries’ election campaigns.

“Moscow is at pains to avoid any words that could be interpreted as direct or indirect interference in the election process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.

“We see that the Russian card is in the red corner on the writing table of all Washington politicians during the election campaign, and that very often they make it a trump card in their game.”

Peskov was responding after U.S. President Barack Obama in an interview with NBC News said it was possible Russia would try to influence the U.S. presidential election after a leak of Democratic National Committee emails that experts have blamed on Russian hackers.

“This reminds me of a company where they tell each other horror stories and then start being frightened of their own stories,” said Peskov.

Cyber security experts have a different opinion:



Many U.S. officials and cyber security experts in and out of government are convinced that state-sponsored Russian hackers are the ones who stole 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee and leaked them to the public just in time to disrupt the Democrats’ national convention in Philadelphia.

Here’s why the experts are so confident the Russians did it:

GEOGRAPHY: At least one of the hacker groups attacking the DNC appeared to cease operations on Russian holidays, and its work hours aligned with a Russian time zone, cybersecurity company FireEye concluded in a report.

LANGUAGE: The hackers also left an obvious digital fingerprint, one cybersecurity expert said, perhaps on purpose: a signature in Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet.

FORENSIC EVIDENCE: After a different batch of hacked Democratic emails was released last month, a wide spectrum of cyber-security experts concluded that it was the work of Russian intelligence agencies through previously known proxy groups known as COZY BEAR or APT 29, and FANCY BEAR or APT 28. “We’ve had lots of experience with both of these actors … and know them well,” according to the DNC’s own contract cybersecurity firm, Crowdstrike, which blogged that one of the two groups had already gained illegal access to the White House, State Department and even the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.