Russia's Attempts to Influence US Elections Via Hacking Dates Back to USSR Era

US outgoing President Barack Obama said that Russia's hacking on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) "was not a secret," and demonstrated "not a particularly fancy brand of espionage or propaganda."

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US outgoing President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that Russia was trying to influence the US presidential election with a hacker attack and that such attempts were nothing new.

In October, Washington accused Moscow of having hacked email servers of US citizens and organizations following numerous media reports about the attacks of Russian hackers on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), among other organizations. Moscow denied the accusations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that the US allegations were "nonsense."

"When the DNC got hacked, we immediately assigned our intelligence community — our law enforcement — to investigate what had happened… And we determined, and announced, in October that it was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies in law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked… Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union," Obama told the Comedy Central television channel in an interview.

The US president said that Russia's hacking "was not a secret," and demonstrated "not a particularly fancy brand of espionage or propaganda."

Earlier in the day, media reported that the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) did not support CIA assumptions that Russian hackers had contributed to the victory of Donald Trump in the November 8 presidential elections. According to the ODNI, the CIA was unable to prove the assumptions.

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