When President Barack Obama blamed North Korea in December 2014 for hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment, he had little to lose. The stakes are higher with Russia, as speculation swirls that Vladimir Putin’s government may be meddling in the U.S. election.
Russia is a leading suspect in an FBI probe of a hacking attack on the Democratic National Committee that resulted in the theft of e-mail and internal reports, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the probe. Cyber specialists say the infiltration and last week’s release of almost 20,000 party e-mails bear the hallmarks of Russian hackers.
With an investigation underway, the Obama administration hasn’t publicly pinned blame on Putin’s government, whose cooperation it needs in a range of global hotspots and negotiations, from the battlefields of Syria to talks over North Korea’s nuclear program. Putin’s government has repeatedly rejected the accusations.
“They want to be very careful in blaming another nation for illegal activities and for cyber activities,” said Olga Oliker, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “If you’re wrong, it’s embarrassing to you. If you’re wrong, you went after the wrong people.”
Asked by reporters to comment on the hacking allegations as he began talks that focused on Syria with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Laos yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov replied: “I wouldn’t like to use English four-letter words.”
As a sign of the political disruption hackers can have, the latest e-mail release forced DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign on the eve of the party’s national convention in Philadelphia. It also prompted the FBI to announce an investigation, fueled accusations by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that the hack was done to benefit Republican nominee Donald Trump and sparked concerns about foreign influence in the U.S. election.
If the allegations against Russia are true, “It’s troubling that they think they can shape and influence U.S. elections,” said Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. “If they think they can really affect the outcome of U.S. elections, it’s naive at best and possibly even dangerous.”
In a brief statement Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation made no mention of Russia and offered no details on where it was focusing its investigation.
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s top homeland security and terrorism adviser, will mention Russia among a small list of bad actors in cyberspace when she speaks Tuesday at a conference in New York.
“Nations like Russia and China are growing more assertive and sophisticated in their cyber operations,” she will say at the International Conference on Cyber Security, according to an advance draft of her speech. She also will name Iran, North Korea and Islamic State.
The White House yesterday announced a plan to coordinate a federal government response to cyber-attacks, with the FBI taking the lead in responding to immediate cyberthreats and the Department of Homeland Security helping victims recover from attacks and prevent them from spreading.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday reiterated a previous Russian statement denying involvement in the breach. In June, Putin’s adviser on the internet, German Klimenko, said such leaks usually happen not because of hackers but because someone used a “simple password.”
“It’s easier to explain such things as intrigues of enemies than with one’s own incompetence,” Klimenko said, according to state-sponsored newswire RIA Novosti.
An internal investigation of the DNC attack led by CrowdStrike Inc. traced the hack to two groups associated with Russian intelligence, possibly working independently. Two other cybersecurity firms, Fidelis Cybersecurity and FireEye Inc., also confirmed the attribution to the Russian hackers, based on malware samples and other data from the DNC network.
Russia’s modus operandi of meddling in other nations’ domestic politics has been documented in neighboring former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Moldova, and across Europe, including France and Germany, said Rumer, currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia and Eurasia Program. “The United States has perhaps the distinction up until now of being insulated from such influence.”
The White House for now is stepping gingerly, saying the FBI is leading a probe into who did what and that it will defer to U.S. law enforcement agencies to figure out who is at fault.
“We know that there are a number of actors, both state and criminal, that are looking for vulnerabilities in the cyber security of the United States. And that includes Russia,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday after the FBI announced its probe. Angela Greiling Keane, Nafeesa Syeed, Bloomberg
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