about how the government believes the gru, russia s military intelligence wing, worked to hack into election voting systems, including sending phishing e-mails to local officials in an attempt to steal their log-in credentials. including documents with viruss hidden inside that if opened could help give access to files on the a kpusercomputers. the homeland security was grilled on what to do to keep from breach. i don t think they were going there to try to just hang out. there is a lot of drama. senator mark warner, top democrat on the intelligence committee saying the hacking attempts were broader and targeted more states than previously revealed. telling usa today the attempted breaches didn t stop on election day. imagine the disruption if thousands of people showed up to vote and their names were no longer on voter files? what would we do? i share your concern. i don t disagree with anything
perhaps it was rooted in russian patriotism. that is what president vladimir putin stated on thursday when he appeared to concede the hacking attempts may have come from his country. saying quote, hackers are free people. just like artists. they would wake up and read about something going on in interstate relations and if they feel patriotic, they may contribute to the fight for those who speak badly of russia. putin did insist the government did not put anybody up to this and continues to deny they had anything to do with the u.s. election. quite remarks from putin. thank you, diane. the irony with the sarcasm. putin went further in terms of admitting of the involvement with the interference. let s bring back our panel.
democracies are being attacked via hacking to sow confusion and undermine democratic political institutions. we had the 2016 hacks of the dnc and john podesta. the french hacking now. just two days ago, the head of domestic intelligence in germany reported an up surge in hacking attempts in advance of the september elections in germany. so are you advised, andrew, as to what to say and what not to say in e-mails when working on a campaign or in the government in general nowadays considering the environment, considering what happened in the 2016 election and also seeing what s happening now? you have to strike the right balance. obviously, you want to make sure that anything that you write would not appear in the washington post or new york times or online in an embarrassing fashion. you also need to be able to have the types of discussions, confidential discussions that
they are you know, they look at north korea, you know, as a daily and hourly threat, so the worry is that this rhetoric, this overheated rhetoric from donald trump, this inconsistent rhetoric from his administration, is ultimately sets off a series of provocations along that border which then draws the united states into a conflict because we have a treaty responsibility to defend south korea. so it s not really a worry right now about north korea in the short term launching a nuclear missile. it s about rhetoric that ultimately is often a comment on the border that then obligates the united states to step in and that would ultimately be a disaster for the united states. reporter: senator murphy. thanks very much for joining us. all right, thanks, wolf. coming up, hacking attempts and fake news. new signs that russia may be trying to interfere in the french presidential election. we have new information. we are not here to sit idly by.
thank you for being with us. sure. when you hear these trolls, this is a sophisticated, coordinated effort. right. massively swaying public opinion. right. it s like a company, right? so the leaders of the company, the people who are interested in swaying public opinion and then they hire people with various ski skills and the stories we re talking about are two different stories. there s the hacking attempts where it s a coordinated effort to get into that computer and possibly grab information. then there s the disinformation where they have armies of people who have computers and they are writing content, working with hackers trying to access computers that can place this information. stand by. review materials that pertains to the incidental collection. the letter asks that the committee look into whether these materials were properly gathered, whether they were properly masked or unmasked and properly disseminated.