The US Senate Committee accused Russia under the collection of intelligence in the elections

Members of the US Senate Committee on Intelligence concluded that the Russian authorities collected reconnaissance data during the American presidential election in 2016. Such a conclusion is contained in the published part of the report in the "Russian case".

The Committee believes that in addition to cyberism, directed against the elected state infrastructure, Russia conducted diverse intelligence activities in the US elections. This continued throughout 2016, until the day of the election.

Also, the compilers of the document came to the conclusion that Russia intervened in the elections in the United States, but these actions did not affect the voting results.

"At least in the six states, the figures associated with Russia went further scanning and made attempts to deliberately access the websites related to voting," the report said. And in 18-21 state (according to various estimates), Russian hackers attacked the "systems providing elections", in particular the election commission. Attackers scanned the data of the systems throughout the electoral cycle, Interfax reports.

In most cases, hackers used the introduction of a SQL code for hacking sites. Sometimes they managed to get the opportunity to change or delete data on the registration of voters.

At the same time, American experts do not know how far the Kremlin’s plans extended. "The committee does not know if the persons associated with the Russian government tried to find and use vulnerabilities during the elections in 2016 or they only collected information and experienced opportunities (American infrastructure) to take the attack in the future," the senators write in the report.

A full report on Russia's activity during an elected campaign, including evidence, is classified, since it mentions sources of information, methods of analytical and counterintelligence work of American special services. However, the main conclusions of the authors of the report are included in the published part, RBC notes.

"The goal of Russia was to undermine the belief of society into a democratic process in the United States, to denigrate the Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton and reduce its chances to win the elections and take the presidential post," the senators say.

With a high degree of confidence, they came to the conclusion that the operation to intervene in the elections began by order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. With the fact that Putin and the Russian government played for Donald Trump and tried to harm Clinton, all three special services of the United States agree: CIA, FBI and NSA. However, the level of confidence in the CIA and the FBI employees is higher than in the NSA.

The report states that the operation to influence the outcome of the elections was multifaceted and coordinated. It was attended by hackers, agencies of Internet trolls, paid bloggers, intermediaries, special services, state media, primarily RT and Sputnik.

The materials obtained with cyber attacks, in particular on the servers of the Democratic Party, were posted on the WikiLeaks website. At the same time, it is emphasized that the materials published on Wikileaks do not contain evidence of falsification or fraud by the leadership of the Democratic Party.

The chairman of the intelligence committee Richard Berr said that senators plan to submit the final version of the report following the investigation in August 2018. Senators intend to answer the question of whether the actions of the Trump election team were coordinated with Russia. So far, evidence of this has not been possible to find .

Washington repeatedly accused Moscow of intervention in the 2016 presidential election. At the moment, the FBI, as well as the apparatus of the special prosecutor Robert Müller, is continuing investigations on this subject, TASS reports. Trump and his closest assistants have repeatedly rejected all the accusations of any unlawful contacts with Russian officials during the election campaign. Moscow also has many times refuted statements about attempts to influence the course of presidential elections in the United States.