The U.S. State Department is still fending off attackers attempting to steal unclassified and classified emails after three months of fighting.

The elusive hackers are said to be from Russia with possible connections to President Vladimir Putin. The attacks have currently only penetrated the unclassified section of the State Department email system.

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Using phishing techniques to attack the system, the attackers are able to send false emails. If these emails are opened, it allows the attacker the ability to look at all emails in one user's system, and send other emails to colleagues, further spreading the virus.

Even though anonymous sources are claiming the attackers are still embedded in the email system, the State Department has not officially confirmed the attacks are happening.

"We have robust security to protect our systems and our information, and we deal successfully with thousands of attacks every day," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf to Bloomberg. "We take any possible cyber intrusion very seriously."

The rumors of Russian government sponsorship might come as a surprise, but the National Security Agency was recently caught hacking into Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Iraqi and Afghani computer systems, embedding a worm to dig into the firmware.

This basically means fair game in the new cyber war, with China, Russia, Iran all willing to attack core U.S. infrastructure and public sector without any change outside the web.

TagsU.S. State Department, hackers, Russia, phishing attacks