Pentagon Under Cyber Attack

[Christina]

Pentagon Cyber Attack Forces 1,500 PCs Off LineFriday , June 22, 2007WASHINGTON — As many as 1,500 computers in the Defense Department were taken off line because of a cyber attack, Pentagon officials said.Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he expects systems will recover soon after Wednesday's attack.Gates said the Pentagon sees hundreds of attacks a day, and this one had no adverse impact on department operations. Employees whose computers were affected could still use their handheld BlackBerries.The attack comes several days after several government agencies within the Department of Homeland Security admitted staffers had been attacked more than 800 times in the past two years.Click here to read more.During a press briefing Gates said of the Pentagon cyber attacks: "We obviously have redundant systems in place. ... There will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences."He said the Pentagon shut the computers down when a penetration of the system was detected, and the cause is still being investigated.When asked if his own e-mail account was affected, Gates said: "I don't do e-mail. I'm a very low-tech person."Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, a Pentagon spokesman, said Defense Department systems are probed every day by a wide variety of attacks."The nature of the threat is large and diverse, and includes recreational hackers, self-styled cyber-vigilantes, various groups with nationalistic or ideological agendas, transnational actors and nation-states," Peppler said.The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

[Christina]

The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVD's, FOX News has learned.The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks."We have detected a global virus for which there has been alerts, and we have seen some of this on our networks," a Pentagon official told FOX News. "We are now taking steps to mitigate the virus."The official could not reveal the source of the attack because that information remains classified.Military computers are often referred to as part of the Global Information Grid, or GIG, a system composed of 17 million computers, many of which house classified or sensitive information.FOX News obtained a copy of one memo sent out last week to an Army division within the Pentagon warning of the cyber attack."Due to the presence of commercial malware, CDR USSTRATCOM has banned the use of removable media (thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately."

 

[tim_from_pa]

I heard about this on FOX news tonight right after I got home from work. It makes me wonder if the enemy isn't trying to gear up to test Obama when he takes over?