WASHINGTON – Leading technology companies said Tuesday that a months-long breach of corporate and government networks was so sophisticated, focused and labor-intensive that a nation had to be behind it, with all the evidence pointing to Russia.
In the first congressional hearing on the breach, representatives of technology companies involved in the response described a hack of almost breathtaking precision, ambition and scope.
The perpetrators stealthily scooped up specific emails and documents on a target list from the U.S. and other countries. “We haven’t seen this kind of sophistication matched with this kind of scale,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told the Senate Intelligence Committee.