US cyberattack: Russia 'clearly' behind SolarWinds hack, says Pompeo but Trump points to China
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Russia as the mastermind behind what is considered the worst cyber attack on the United States government. On December 13, 2020, The Washington Post reported that multiple government agencies were breached through SolarWinds's Orion software. Pompeo is the first official to publicly link Russia and has described what happened as a massive campaign of "serious and continuous" cyber espionage against the US government. According to Pompeo, within a few months, Russia allegedly entered several US government agencies and private firms, in addition to companies and governments around the world. "There was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside US government systems," Pompeo said. "We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity," he added. Asked about the criticism, Pompeo suggested that Trump had maintained his silence so ...