AUSTIN, Texas — SolarWinds, the Austin-based software-maker, is at the center of a large data breach targeting government agencies, private companies and critical infrastructure. The cybersecurity unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it suspects Russian hackers in the attack on the company’s Orion software. The intruders apparently exploited vulnerabilities in the software.

Experts say it's going to take months to kick elite the hackers out of U.S. government networks. The hackers have been quietly rifling through those networks for months in Washington's worst cyberespionage failure on record.

The hack creates a fresh foreign policy problem for President Donald Trump in his final days in office. President-elect Joe Biden says his new administration "will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office."

In an interview with Capital Tonight David Springer, an Austin-based lawyer who specializes in securities litigation including cybersecurity counseling and policy, said, “Whoever did this clearly did their research and has come to understand that SolarWinds Software exists on a wide range of targets all across the private sector and the government.”

Experts say there simply are not enough threat-hunting teams to identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked.