‘Foreign government’ hackers steal secret Pentagon plans

The US Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn has revealed that a foreign intelligence agency was behind a hack attack that stole classified information about a top secret weapons system.

According to Aviation Week, the weapons system, which is under development, might have to be redesigned after the files were stolen from a military contractor’s computer network.

Plans and confidential blueprints were included in the haul of 24,000 files said to have been copied by the hackers.

The revelation came to light as William Lynn gave a speech at the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington DC, outlining his department’s “first ever strategy for operating in cyberspace”. Recognising that the problem extended beyond its own networks, the Pentagon is piloting a program to share classified…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.