Joe Biden Blames Russia For Huge SolarWinds Hack

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday blamed Russia for carrying out a major hacking operation against U.S. government agencies and major companies ― echoing most cybersecurity experts and breaking with President Donald Trump, who has suggested China was responsible.

Initial assessments, including from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr, suggest Russia is responsible, said Biden, who is being regularly briefed on U.S. intelligence, during a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware. He urged Trump to make a similar announcement.

Officials, private firms and national security analysts are still struggling to understand the full extent of the ongoing attack, which is widely known as the SolarWinds hack after the company whose software was targeted. The hack poses “a grave risk” to the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Experts are concerned because of how much data the hackers were able to access once they infiltrated SolarWinds software, which is used by thousands of major American institutions, earlier this year. The victims of the campaign include the Departments of State, Treasury and Energy, as well as corporations like Microsoft.

Last week, Biden pledged to “make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” suggesting that he would take strong action to punish the perpetrators and prevent similar hacks in the future.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.