Obama gave attention on cyberattacks during the US Presidential elections.
Outgoing US President Barack Obama has ordered to conduct a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 US Presidential elections.
This was disclosed by the White House on Saturday as concerns over Russian interference in the elections between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
In a statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Obama called for the review earlier this week, amid increasing calls from Congress for more information on the extent of Russian interference in the campaign.
“We are committed to ensuring the integrity of our elections and this report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyberactivity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities and capture lessons learned to make sure that we brief members of Congress and stakeholders as appropriate,” Schultz said.
According to Schultz, Obama wants the report completed before his term ends on January 20.
“We are going to make public as much as we can,” he added. “This is a major priority for the president.”
The order of Obama comes after Democrats in Congress pressured the White House to reveal additional details, to Congress or to the public, of Russian hacking and disinformation in the election where Trump won in an upset victory.
It also follows after Trump rejected the intelligence community finding of official Russian involvement to help him win the elections.
There were confidential emails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, a top adviser to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, which were steadily leaked out via WikiLeaks in the months before the election, breaking Clinton’s effort to win the White House race.
One month before the election on November 8, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence announced that “the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”
“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process,” they said.
However, in an interview published Wednesday with Time magazine for its “Person of the Year” award, Trump dismissed those findings.
He also believed that the intelligence report was politicized.
“I don’t believe they interfered,” he said. “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”