Hackers breach Pentagon fighter plane project
The Wall Street Journal reports that hackers have accessed “several terabytes of data” from a $300 billion defense project. The Pentagon has neither confirmed nor denied the claim, but says it doesn’t have any specific concerns about the technology being compromised.
The newspaper reports that the attacks, which appear to originate in China, led to hackers copying data about the design and electronics systems of the Joint Strike Fighter (pictured) which could be used in defending against the plane. However, the most sensitive details about the plane were not stored on machines which could be accessed online.
The report says the specific information stolen in this attack involved a system which diagnoses maintenance issues in-flight. It appears the hackers exploited vulnerabilities in the security used by contractors working on the project. They then added their own encryption to data as they were stealing it, making it harder to tell exactly which data was copied.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman refused to discuss the specific claims but said he was “not aware of any specific concerns” that the technology had been compromised. That’s an interesting wording as it leaves the possibility that there was a genuine security concern and that officials intentionally made sure not to tell Whitman, in order that the statement he gave would technically be true.
According to the WSJ report, such attacks on US agencies have escalated in the past six months; one unnamed official says the targets include “everything that keeps this country going”.
The Joint Strike Fighter project is not only the most expensive weapons program the Pentagon has ever produced, but also the most complex computer project. It’s based on 7.5 million lines of code, triple the highest amount used for any existing fighter.
It’s certainly no secret that there have been previous attempts to breach security on the project. The WSJ claims there have been ‘penetrations’ in both of the past two years, while another Pentagon spokesman said, “We aggressively monitor our networks for intrusions and have appropriate procedures to address these threats.”
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