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Guccifer 2.0 Claims Responsibility for WikiLeaks DNC Email Dump

But experts are sceptical.
Image: John Williams RUS/Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons

On Friday, Wikileaks dumped nearly 20,000 apparent emails from members of the US Democratic National Committee (DNC). Shortly after, the pseudonymous hacker Guccifer 2.0, widely believed to be the work of Russian intelligence, said they were behind the breach.

"Yeah man," Guccifer 2.0 told Motherboard in a Twitter message when asked to confirm whether he was responsible. Guccifer 2.0 also tweeted, "Wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I'd given them!!!"

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@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I'd given them!!! #HillaryClinton #DonaldTrump #BernieSanders #Guccifer2 https://t.co/TXFAySUKWw
— GUCCIFER 2.0 (@GUCCIFER_2) July 22, 2016

According to Wikileaks' website, "the leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC." Those include Communications Director Luis Miranda, National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan, and Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer. The emails stretch from January last year until this May.

In June, the DNC announced that it had been hacked, and blamed the breach on the Russian government.

Guccifer 2.0 claimed that these emails came from the same breach on the DNC, by simply responding: "yeah, u r a visionary, man."

Experts are sceptical about links between Guccifer 2.0 and this new dump of emails, though.

"The Wikileaks hacked #DNC emails feel qualitatively very different to the docs in the #Guccifer 2 hack," the information security expert known as Pwn All The Things tweeted. Over the last couple of months, Guccifer 2.0 has publicly released several caches of individual documents, but not full emails in this style.

When asked to prove whether he really was behind this latest dump, Guccifer 2.0 told Motherboard, "Why should I?" When pressed, he said, "just ask wikileaks guys." Wikileaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting and writing.