Computer Spies Breach Strike Fighter Jet Project
April 21, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.
Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad.
Attacks like these — or U.S. awareness of them — appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official briefed on the matter. “There’s never been anything like it,” this person said, adding that other military and civilian agencies as well as private companies are affected. “It’s everything that keeps this country going.”
Read a somewhat related story from earier this week. – Chinese cyber spies have penetrated so deep into the US system ranging from its secure defense network, banking system, electricity grid to putting spy chips into its defense planes that it can cause serious damage to the US any time, a top US official on counter-intelligence has said.
UPDATE: The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin, the lead defense contractor for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, suggested yesterday that cyber-attacks had not caused any serious security breaches in the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program.
Still, defense and corporate officials said attacks on the Pentagon as well as the F-35 program are constant, and former defense officials familiar with the program said some of the F-35’s less sensitive systems have been infiltrated by cyber-intruders.
“We know we are probed on this every day. We have very aggressive defensive systems. The more sensitive the information, the greater the safeguards are,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said he was not aware of any sensitive F-35 technology having been compromised by a cyber-attack.
This is a very sad development but I fear one that we will be reading about far more frequently.
It will be interesting to see how the USA responds against the nation sponsoring these attacks, if there is the usual invitation for a group hug and a cup of coffee at the white house as seems to be the general theme then I would advise the White House to stock up on coffee and Chinese tea!