During the past 18 months, Sharyl Attkisson began noticing strange activity with both her home and work computers.
Attkisson, a CBS correspondent and 1982 graduate of the University of Florida, eventually alerted her employer, which then hired a cybersecurity firm to monitor what CBS labeled on Friday as hacking.
The hacker or hackers had access to "pretty much everything," Attkisson said, including financial information and personal passwords, but no one stole her identity. There were no traces of fraud, meaning it was likely more than a standard phishing scam.
"CBS News and I both take it very seriously and are continuing to investigate to see where we need to go from here," she told WUFT Wednesday morning.
The infiltrator's skill level was high, the firm determined, and additional efforts by Attkisson and CBS to protect her might not have been successful.
"I'm not sure we could have done anything to keep them out if they really wanted to get in," she said.
Throughout the time when the hacking activity appeared to have occurred, Attkisson was working on stories about the ATF's ill-fated Fast and Furious operation, as well as the Benghazi incident.
"I do a lot of government watchdog work," she said. Much of it "the Obama administration considered to be not reflecting well upon them, or they were very sensitive to it."
Still, CBS wrote Friday, "the federal government has not been accused in the intrusion of Attkisson's computer."
She also spoke with WUFT about the reaction to the hacking, stories she's covered and the government's level of trustworthiness lately.