Moscow ready to release correspondence with US on alleged Russian election meddling
Russia is prepared to declassify all correspondences with the US related to alleged meddling in the American presidential election in 2016, according to a senior official of the Cyber Threats Response Center.
“We are ready to make public all correspondence if the US side gives its consent to it,” Nikolai Murashov, deputy director of the FSB-run CTRC, told reporters on Tuesday. These files are now classified, he said.
Washington’s cooperation in probing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacking attacks was limited, the official said. Moscow had only received a number of messages “containing technical information about the hack,” Murashov explained.
Russian cyber security experts examined it even before Donald Trump’s inauguration. “An exhaustive response was then sent to the American side.”
The US, for its part, is reluctant to collaborate with Russia on ensuring the security of cyberspace, he said, adding Washington “unilaterally blocked” bilateral efforts.
Almost two years ago, the DNC case spearheaded claims that the Kremlin had a hand in the 2016 election – an allegation that Moscow has called ‘ridiculous’.
Assaults on computer networks frequently make headlines around the world, with Russia being a convenient suspect, Murashov said. However, claims that Moscow is meddling in other countries’ affairs “are never substantiated by reliable technical data that could be analyzed by experts.”
In the meantime, Russia itself is a constant target of such attacks launched from abroad. The center, which was set up by the FSB earlier this year, recorded over four billion attempts to disrupt Russian computer networks and servers, it has been revealed.
One such attack took place two days before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi with the intrusion coming from the US, Canada, Thailand and Malaysia. “Early in the morning on February 5 the Olympic Games’ servers were subjected to massive computer attacks,” Murashov said.
Also on rt.com DNC docs were leaked, not hacked, intelligence veterans sayThe hackers managed to create a “global bot network” that included over 100,000 computers hijacked by the malware all around the world.
Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.
