Posted on 08/30/2010 9:51:31 PM PDT by Iam1ru1-2
A foreign spy agency has pulled off the most serious breach of computer networks in Pentagon history by inserting a flash drive into a U.S. military laptop, Washington has admitted.
The previously classified incident, which took place in 2008 in the Middle-East, was disclosed in a magazine article by Deputy Defence Secretary William J Lynn.
He said a 'malicious code' on the flash drive spread undetected on both classified and unclassified Pentagon systems, 'establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control'.
Writing in an article for Foreign Affairs, Mr Lynn said: 'It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary.
The Pentagon operation to counter the attack, known as Operation Buckshot Yankee, marked a turning point in U.S. cyber-defence strategy, he said.
In November 2008, the U.S. Defence Department banned the use of the small high-tech storage devices that are used to move data from one computer to another. The ban was partially lifted early this year with the approval of limited use of the devices.
Mr Lynn did not disclose what, if any, military secrets may have been stolen in the 2008 penetration of the system, what nation orchestrated the attack, nor whether there were any other repercussions.
The article went on to warn that U.S. adversaries can threaten American military might without building stealth fighters, aircraft carriers or other expensive weapons systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I'm sure, as comrades-in-arms, Obama and Holder would have given them whatever they wanted.
The same thing happened to me when I visited a rogue porn site that that infected my PC with malware and stuff. You need to update your firewall or this could happen to you too.
Autorun is not your friend.
http://research.pandasecurity.com/panda-usb-and-autorun-vaccine/
Well seems not disclosing who the enemy is, is the rule of the day, when its Religion of Piece (c) nut jobs with cell phones taped to their Pepto Bismol or now this - the country in question was CHINA.. every one and their grandma knew it back then and do so now, so why pussyfoot around this.
What I didn’t know is that a counter opperation was launched, hope that got some results. The Chicoms are developing their cyber warfare capabilities at an alarming rate hope the US and other western powers take action, for now they seem to think they can do as they please.
Of course with Bambi in power I wonder what if anything will be done, I know the lower rung people are dedicated but who knows what Washington will allow them to do :(
I was in Iraq when Buckshot Yankee was happening, after they found out what was going down the reaction was immediate. We are still banned from thumb drives and external hard drives on both classified and unclassified computers, and had to take refresher courses on handling classified data, material etc. IA really clamp down on monitoring traffic and when seeing a thumb drive plugged in shuts the computer down and account is removed, and most of the time the civilian is fired, and the soldier gets it from his commander.
Rumor over here is, it was Chinese, we have haji (Iraqi) shops, vendors who sell contractors, soldiers DVD, cd’s, radios, small electronics including thumb drives to help stimulate the Iraqi economy.
The Iraqi vendors where buying Chinese products including infected thumb drives, then selling to us, these drives where design to “ping” out make the connection and pass data. Never really heard if there was or how much of a security breach existed, but if it happens here maybe you should be careful back home when purchasing Chinese thumb drives or any Chinese product.
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