The US intelligence community is "confident" that Russia was behind the recent hacks of US officials and organisations emails, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of National Intelligence said.
According to the joint statement issued on Friday, "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."
"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," says the statement, posted by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Probes of election systems in several states "in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company," the US officials said. "However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government."
--IANS
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