New Book Reveals How Obama Team Plotted Cyberattacks Against Russia in 2016

In the summer of 2016, the Obama team prepared a plan for a large-scale cyber-operation against the Russian media, the country's most influential businessmen and President Vladimir Putin personally, according to former White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel.

His remarks are included in "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump," a book by Michael Isikoff's and David Corn's which is due to go on sale on March 13. Excerpts were released by Yahoo News earlier this week.

Daniel explained that the cyber-offensive against Moscow was co-authored by Celeste Wallander, the US National Security Council's former chief Russia expert.

The plan stipulated that the National Security Agency (NSA) would conduct a number of cyberattacks to neutralize Russian websites and the Guccifer 2.0 hacker, who compromised the emails of the campaign headquarters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party's National Committee.

Also, the plan envisaged blocking the website DCLeaks.com, which leaked information stolen from the Democrats.

In addition, Daniel alleged, the Obama team hoped to disrupt the work of Russian media through DDoS attacks, while also preparing attacks on Russian intelligence agencies to damage their command and control nodes.

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At the end of the day, President Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco scrapped the plan because they feared that "if news of the project leaked it would 'box the president in' and create pressure for him to act," Yahoo News cited the book's authors as saying.

Russia has repeatedly denied its interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, something that was once again reiterated by President Vladimir Putin during his March 2018 interview with NBC News.

"Could anyone really believe that Russia, thousands of miles away… influenced the outcome of the election? Doesn't that sound ridiculous even to you? It's not our goal to interfere. We do not see what goal we would accomplish by interfering. There's no goal," Putin stressed.