It's been common knowledge for more than a week that Russian hackers found their way into US government agencies.

There was a significant effort to use a piece of third party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems.

Speaking to conservative radio host Mark Levin on Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo finally acknowledged who was behind the cyber attack.

He's the most senior government official to do so.

We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.

I think this is one of the most serious cyber attacks we've seen in the past decade.

That's Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, one of the companies investigating the attack which targeted private organizations as well.

Smith told NPR that hackers were able to infiltrate solar winds.

That's a Texas company that makes widely used network monitoring software.

This actor put malware into legitimate software that was then distributed to roughly 18,000 customers around the world.

Governments, companies and the like.

Worse yet, this attacked not just happened last week. Russian hackers got in back in March.

I believe that when you see an attack like the one that we are currently witnessing, one that is not yet over, this is an economic issue but it is more than that.

It is a threat to the national security of the country as a whole.

And we need to respond to it with the level of urgency that that requires.

Consider this. The US has been worried about and planning for Russian election interference for years.

And while the election was secure, Russia was interfering in other ways.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, December 21st.

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