Washington: US officials investigating Qatar’s ostracizing by fellow Gulf countries believe that Russian hackers breaking into the country’s state news servers and planting fake stories could have contributed to the move, reports CNN.
Qatar and the US have confirmed that the FBI has sent a team to Doha to investigate the alleged hacking.
US officials told CNN that intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicate that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago.
The alleged involvement of Russian hackers adds to the concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.
‘US officials say the hackers’ goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries,’ says the report.
It's not yet clear whether the US has tracked the hackers in the Qatar incident to Russian criminal organizations or to the Russian security services blamed for the US election hacks.
The FBI and CIA declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Qatari embassy in Washington told CNN said the investigation is ongoing and its results would be released publicly soon.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates announced on Monday that they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, marking fresh escalation of tensions between the Gulf partners over Doha’s alleged support for Islamist militant groups.
The catalyst for Monday’s action was said to be a Qatari news report that quoted Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani as criticizing Saudi Arabia, praising Iran, and describing Qatar’s relations with Israel as “good”. Qatari officials dismissed the news as fake, adding the news websites that published the report were the victim of a “shameful cyber-crime.” But the purported remarks were widely believed to echo official Qatari policy, reported The Atlantic.
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.
"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation," the foreign minister told CNN's Becky Anderson. "It began based on fabricated news being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked. This has been proved by the FBI."
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