Vladimir Putin’s stunning about-turn on Russian involvement in hacking last year’s election.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that “patriotically minded” Russian hackers could have led cyber attacks to help Donald J. Trump win the November election. The New York Times reports Putin denied any state involvement, though he claims to know it’s “easy to do”.
“We’re not doing this on the state level.”
“I can imagine that someone is doing this purposefully — building the chain of attacks so that the territory of the Russian Federation appears to be the source of that attack.”
“Modern technologies allow to do that kind of thing, it’s rather easy to do.”
“[Hackers] are like artists [who choose their targets] when they wake up in the morning.”
“I think that [Donald Trump] he was totally right when he said it could have been someone sitting on their bed or somebody intentionally inserted a flash drive with the name of a Russian national, or something like that,”
“Anything is possible in this virtual world. Russia never engages in activities of this kind, and we do not need it. It makes no sense for us to do such things. What for?”
Russian nationals? My article on Pyotr Levashov: The Pied Piper.
Flash drives? My article on the hacking of the actual vote: The Fix.
No state involvement? My article on Putin’s FSB hiring cyber criminals. : High Treason In Moscow.