President Obama on Thursday said the US would take action in response to the Russian government's attempt to influence the presidential election by hacking Democratic officials.

"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action and we will — at a time and place of our own choosing," Obama told NPR. "Some of it may be explicit and publicized, some of it may not be."

The Obama administration said earlier Thursday that the covert hack of Democratic Party officials' emails ahead of the presidential election must have happened with the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told NBC's Andrea Mitchell it was a fact that Russia was behind the hack — and a targeted attack on American political organizations would only have happened with approval from the "highest level" of the Russian government.

"I don't think things happen in the Russian government of this consequence without Vladimir Putin knowing about it," Rhodes said on MSNBC. "Everything we know about how Russia operates and how Putin controls the government would suggest, again when you're talking about a significant cyberintrusion like this, we're talking about the highest levels of government."

The comments came after NBC reported on Wednesday that Putin was personally involved in the hack. A Kremlin spokesperson told the Associated Press the report was "laughable nonsense."

