US blames Russia for hacking political groups

Washington, Oct 8: The United States on Friday blamed Russia for hacking US political sites, an accusation immediately dismissed as "nonsense" by Moscow.

Shortly after the White House claimed in a statement that US intelligence was "confident" that Russia was behind recent hacking of emails from US citizens and political organisations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly dismissed the accusation.

"Every day there are tens of thousands of attacks on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's website. Many of the attacks can be traced to the US but we're not blaming the White House or Langley every time," Xinhua news agency quoted Peskov as saying.

In July, WikiLeaks disclosed a trove of emails hacked from the accounts of staff at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which appeared to discredit Democratic Party's claim of neutrality in the primary elections.

According to contents of the almost 20,000 emails, DNC officials -- who are supposed to remain neutral during the primary contest -- appeared to conspire against Hillary Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders.

After the disclosure, the DNC blamed Russia for the hack of emails despite the fact that a hacker, with the name of "Guccifer 2.0" claimed responsibility for the cyber attack.

IANS