Donald Trump has broken his silence over the huge suspected Russian cyber attack claiming that China could be behind the attack, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly blaming Russia the day before.
The president tweeted Saturday just before noon to downplay the hack which has compromised broad swathes of the federal government and private sector and has been described as the cyber equivalent of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Trump brushed off the hack claiming it ‘is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality’ and insisted that ‘everything is well under control’.
He also once again pushed unfounded claims of widespread fraud in the presidential election, saying that voting machines could have been hacked.
Trump posted this Christmas card photo on Friday with First Lady Melania. He broke his silence over the suspected Russian cyber attack claiming it ‘is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality’ and ‘everything is well under control’
Trump tweeted claiming that China could be behind the attack, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly blaming Russia the day before
‘The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,’ he tweeted.
‘Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).’
He continued in a follow-up post claiming without evidence that voting machines may have been hacked and that he ‘won big’ in the election, tagging Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in his tweet.
‘There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo.’
Twitter marked the second tweet with a warning stating that ‘Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election.’
His comments come just hours after Pompeo became the first US official to publicly attribute the massive hacking campaign to Russia.
‘There was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems,’ Pompeo told The Mark Levin Show on Friday.
‘This was a very significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.’
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman later denied Kremlin involvement, and the Russian embassy said in a statement that the country ‘does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.’
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe on Wednesday issued a statement revealing that the breach on government agencies was ‘significant.’
‘This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,’ he said.
Trump has remained quiet on the cyber attack until now and his silence has not gone unnoticed.
Democrats in Congress demanded a harsh response on the perpetrators and blasted Trump for failing to address the issue.
Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping. Trump hit out at China claiming the nation could be behind the attack
Pompeo (pictured with his wife Susan) became the first US official to publicly attribute the massive hacking campaign to Russia Friday
‘Our nation is under assault. This cyberattack could be the largest in our history. We don’t yet know the extent of the damage, but we know that we weren’t prepared & have our work cut out for us,’ tweeted Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat Friday.
‘We can’t wait for leadership, we need it now. @realdonaldtrump, where are you?’
Crow also likened the attack to Pearl Harbour in a follow-up tweet: ‘The situation is developing, but the more I learn this could be our modern day, cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor.’
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, described the hack as an act of war telling MSNBC: ‘It’s pretty hard to distinguish this from an act of aggression that rises to the level of an attack that qualifies as war.’
The sprawling attack, which went undetected for nearly nine months, compromised the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, State and Energy, as well as a growing list of companies and local governments across the country.
Officials with the nation’s cybersecurity agency warn that the breach could be difficult to undo, saying the hackers ‘demonstrated sophistication and complex tradecraft’ and that it was likely that they had built additional secret backdoors while active inside the compromised networks.
Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to properly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked, and warn infected networks may have to be ‘burned to the ground’ and rebuilt from scratch.