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"This is a significant escalation," said Paul O'Connor, head of

Feb. 17, 2017 by Paul Fletcher

"This is a significant escalation," said Paul O'Connor, head of the FBI's Cyber Crimes Center.

"This is unacceptable, and one that we're going to continue to work with our partners in the cyber security industry to prevent such attacks as we did before," O'Connor said.

Microsoft's announcement came at the end of a week-long investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 US election, in which the FBI found that some Russian government entities had been involved.

Microsoft issued a statement Monday saying it had been working closely with local law enforcement and "immediately agreed to investigate the cyber security related to the Russian Government's use of the DNS name and domain names of the U.S. government and other organizations," while also working with local law enforcement officials.

The statement said that while it was still "highly uncertain" what Moscow was trying to do with the domains, "we are working very closely with the Russian authorities to address this issue, and we will continue to do all we can to prevent such attacks."

The company said it was "unaware of any Russian activity in the United States" and was "not aware of any significant intelligence or other activity."