US Democrats: Russians manipulate elections with emails stolen in hack

Russia is trying to influence the US election by publishing Democratic Party emails. According to that party, experts would have stated that. The emails were stolen in a hack already attributed to the Russians.

On Friday, a sizable amount of e-mails from the top of the Democratic party appeared on WikiLeaks. Its contents have meanwhile led to the resignation of the party’s chairman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, says experts are claiming Russian state hackers are behind the publication: “Experts say the Russians are now releasing these emails to help Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re published to the eve of the Democratic convention.”

The hack of a server belonging to the Democratic National Committee, the main governing body of the US Democratic party, was previously linked to Russian intelligence by US security firm CrowdStrike. That company investigated the hack after discovering suspicious internet traffic and excluded the hackers. Soon after, the claim of a hacker with the alias Guccifer 2.0 emerged that he was behind the attack and had easily gained access to the server as of the summer of 2015.

CrowdStrike stands by its claim that the Russians are behind the attack, calling Guccifer 2.0 a diversion attempt. Among other things, metadata on released documents, use of a Russian style of smileys and the timing of the release of the documents and Guccifer 2.0 would indicate involvement from Russia, Motherboard describes. Almost immediately after the hack of the Democratic party’s server was announced, the first documents appeared online and Guccifer 2.0 made itself known.

At the same time, experts point out that it is difficult to prove who is behind a hack and that it is possible that multiple parties had access to the servers. The Republican Party dismisses the claims as “absurd.”