US Officials 'Confident' Russia Behind Recent Political Hacking

U.S. officials say they are confident that Russia was behind recent hacks of e-mails from persons and institutions, including U.S. political organizations, according to a joint statement released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security.

"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts," the statement said.

Officials said the "thefts and disclosures" are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process, adding that such activity is not new to Moscow, as Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia to influence public opinion there.

"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.

Officials said they were not in a position to attribute activity like scanning and probing of election-related systems in some states to the Russian government. However, the statement noted that such activity in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. The DHS and USIC stressed that it would be "extremely difficult" for someone, including a nation-state actor, to hack and alter actual ballots because of the decentralized nature of the election and the number of protections state and local officials have in place.

Still, DHS said it urges state and local officials to stay vigilant and seek cybersecurity assistance.

A series of emails leaked by WikiLeaks in July led to the resignation of then- Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The emails showed the DNC was working to undermine the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The emails purported to show that DNC staffers mocked the Sanders campaign and reacted negatively to criticism in the media that they were biased toward Clinton. Following the leak, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee became the victim of yet another cyberattack. Reuters reported at the time that the attack was similar to the one against the DNC.

Sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that Russian government hackers were behind the new hack.

After the hack into the DNC emails, Donald Trump openly encouraged Russia to spy against the US, challenging them to hack into State Department emails. He later said he was joking.

In September, the emails of former Secretary of State Colin Powell were leaked and obtained by the website DCLeaks.com. The emails showed that Powell referred to Trump as a "national disgrace" and lamented Hillary Clinton's attempts to equate her email usage with his own.

At the first presidential debate, Trump suggested that maybe China or a 400-pound hacker was behind the cyberattacks.

This report will be updated.

Marc Torrence contributed to this report

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