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The Pentagon got owned pretty hard with 1,500 accounts being taken offline due to a hack attack. For once however they did admit the incident and didn’t try to cover it over or brush it off.
I guess the amount of attacks they get is exponentially more than other networks…but still, I would have thought they should be super secure.
About 1,500 unclassified e-mail users at the Pentagon had their service disrupted yesterday when a hacker infiltrated the e-mail system, forcing the accounts to be taken offline.
In a briefing today with reporters in Washington at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates confirmed the incident and said that the users were disconnected from the system after the intrusion was discovered.
“The reality is that the Defense Department is constantly under attack,” Gates said during the briefing. “Elements of the [Office of the Secretary of Defense] unclassified e-mail system were taken offline yesterday afternoon, due to a detected penetration. A variety of precautionary measures are being taken. We expect the system to be online again very soon.”
The funny thing is the Secretary of Defense himself doesn’t even use e-mail…so I doubt he even noticed what had happened.
Hopefully the government will sharpen up it’s ideas.
Gates said that he was not sure why the 1,500 users were removed temporarily from the system. “Well, I don’t know the answer to that, and they’re still investigating it.”
Gates said he doesn’t use e-mail, so he didn’t know if his account was affected.
“I don’t do e-mail,” he said. “I’m a very low-tech person.”
A spokesman at the Department of Defense late this afternoon said he had no additional information about the incident.
This comes shortly after the GAO (Government Accountability Office) report slamming FBI Internal Security.
Source: Computer World
gyaresu says
Well that was bound to happen. Who would like to bet they don’t use keys for email verification hmmm?
SN says
That is am amazing story. I wondor what was compromised.
-SN
backbone says
gyaresu, your right… every person would do the same because they would feel secure having there email account on a pentagon server… this is the illusion of security…
gyaresu says
Monkeys got nukes. Sigh.
Sandeep Nain says
and I assumed pentagon must be having the best sysadmin and most hardened servers…. silly me :)
wyatt says
The pentagon is a joke
gyaresu says
Great example to show clients. That and the myspace activeX virus from last year.
backbone says
no wyatt, there sysadmin is a joke =)
gyaresu says
No backbone: ‘their’.
backbone says
hey gyaresu, don’t correct me, I am not a native English speaker, so mistakes are accepted :
gyaresu says
No offence meant backbone. Just a repetition joke based on correcting the corrector.
I should have had smileys or similar to make that clear. I apologise.
backbone says
It was no offense gyaresu, only I cannot understand ironic jokes in plain-text format… And from the way I replied it doesn’t look as I was offended, I tried making up an excuse for myself for not trying hard to write correctly ;)
gyaresu says
Right then. Comments apology war! /smiley