Obama vows to take action on alleged Russian hacking

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed to take actions against Russia for its alleged cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election.

"There is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections...we need to take action. And we will -at a time and place of our choosing," Obama told U.S. National Public Radio (NPR).

"Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be," he added.

The Obama administration in October officially blamed Russia for hacking U.S. political institutions and persons to interfere with the U.S. election process, an accusation immediately dismissed as "nonsense" by Moscow.

The episode reached it climax last weekend when the Washington Post uncovered a secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment report in which the agency claimed that Russia's meddling in the U.S. election was aimed at helping Republican Donald Trump win the White House.

According to the CIA assessment, Russians were believed to have hacked both Republican and Democratic organizations, though only damaging documents from Democrats were leaked to the public.

However, CIA's conclusion was not endorsed by the entire U.S. intelligence community, which includes 17 intelligence agencies.

According to local media reports, U.S. Federal Bureau of Intelligence is still not certain that the alleged Russia's meddling in the U.S. election had a specific goal other than merely sowing discord around the election.

The White House said early this month Obama had ordered a "full review" of the cyberattacks during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

During his interview with NPR on Thursday, Obama acknowledged that a range of assessments were taking place among different agencies.

"When I receive a final report, we'll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations," said Obama.

source: Xinhua