Trump on hacking: ‘I think it was Russia’

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday offered his first acknowledgment that hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other political targets were likely conducted by the Russian government. 

“As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” he said at his first news conference since last summer. 

Though the computer security and intelligence communities have been largely unified that Russia was behind the attacks, Trump had been skeptical. Throughout the campaign, he suggested that the breaches may have originated in China, Iran or the bedroom of a 400-pound hacker. 

While Trump acknowledged that results of a recently released report pointing to Russia are probably correct, he stressed the widespread incidence of hacking. 

“I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people,” he continued.  

{mosads}”When we lost 22 million names and everything else that was hacked recently, they didn’t make a big deal out of that. That was something that was extraordinary. That was probably China. We had much hacking going on,” he said, referring to the Office of Personnel Management hack that exposed personal information of 20 million people.  

Trump also repeated a jab at the DNC he had made on Twitter. 

“I have to say this also — the Democratic National Committee was totally open to be hacked. They did a very poor job. They could have had hacking defense, which we had,” he said.