WikiLeaks offers to 'authenticate' US intelligence on Russia's involvement in election hacking

WikiLeaks took to Twitter to suggest that President Barack Obama should provide it access to any material relating to Russia's reported involvement in the US election hack, offering to authenticate the documents for better credibility.

The whistle-blowing platform's tweet closely followed Obama's interview on 15 December with NPR, in which he took a tough stance on Russia and President Vladimir Putin's reported personal involvement in cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential elections.

During the election campaign WikiLeaks had published the Podesta emails, a trove of information stolen from the inbox of Hillary Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta.

On 15 December, speaking to a group of donors in New York, Clinton blamed Putin and Russia for the cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and her campaign. She said that the attacks were in efforts to "undermine our democracy" and were ordered by Putin "because he has a personal beef against me."

Clinton said, "This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation," the New York Times reported.

WikiLeaks' Podesta dumps while providing insight into the inner workings of the Democratic Party is also believed to have severely undermined Clinton's campaign during the election. Even as US intelligence agencies reportedly concluded of Russia and Putin himself having personally been involved in the election cyberattacks, Julian Assange maintains that no documents published by WikiLeaks was provided by the Kremlin.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Assange acknowledged that Russian hackers may possibly have had a hand in the DNC hack but WikiLeaks' source "is not the Russian government."

Assange said, "There is a conflation between three things: WikiLeaks' publications, alleged hacks on the US voting system and other publications appearing on the internet that basically no-one has heard of, that didn't have any impact in the election."

WikiLeaks also claimed that it has been recently targeted by "different types" of DDoS attacks. The transparency organisation had previously also reported to having been subject to a "targeted" cyberattackdays before the 8 November election.

Whether the recent DDoS attacks against WikiLeaks are in any way connected to the geopolitical scene the whistle-blowing platform now appears to be entangled in, still remains unclear.