Pentagon Hit by Unprecedented Cyber Attack

As a result of the cyber attack, the Defense Department has banned the use of external hardware devices throughout a vast network of military computers.

FOXNews.com

Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVD's, FOX News has learned.

The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks.

"We have detected a global virus for which there has been alerts, and we have seen some of this on our networks," a Pentagon official told FOX News. "We are now taking steps to mitigate the virus."

The official could not reveal the source of the attack because that information remains classified.

"Daily there are millions of scans of the GIG, but for security reasons we don't discuss the number of actual intrusions or attempts, or discuss specific measures commanders in the field may be taking to protect and defend our networks," the department said in an official statement.

Military computers are often referred to as part of the Global Information Grid, or GIG, a system composed of 17 million computers, many of which house classified or sensitive information.

FOX News obtained a copy of one memo sent out last week to an Army division within the Pentagon warning of the cyber attack.

"Due to the presence of commercial malware, CDR USSTRATCOM has banned the use of removable media (thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008...dented-attack/

WMD Owl Wrote:Pentagon Hit by Unprecedented Cyber Attack

As a result of the cyber attack, the Defense Department has banned the use of external hardware devices throughout a vast network of military computers.

FOXNews.com

Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Pentagon has suffered from a cyber attack so alarming that it has taken the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash drives and DVD's, FOX News has learned.

The attack came in the form of a global virus or worm that is spreading rapidly throughout a number of military networks.

"We have detected a global virus for which there has been alerts, and we have seen some of this on our networks," a Pentagon official told FOX News. "We are now taking steps to mitigate the virus."

The official could not reveal the source of the attack because that information remains classified.

"Daily there are millions of scans of the GIG, but for security reasons we don't discuss the number of actual intrusions or attempts, or discuss specific measures commanders in the field may be taking to protect and defend our networks," the department said in an official statement.

Military computers are often referred to as part of the Global Information Grid, or GIG, a system composed of 17 million computers, many of which house classified or sensitive information.

FOX News obtained a copy of one memo sent out last week to an Army division within the Pentagon warning of the cyber attack.

"Due to the presence of commercial malware, CDR USSTRATCOM has banned the use of removable media (thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008...dented-attack/

According to this report the GIG is under constant attack. Why did it take this long to what seems a logical step in eliminating viral attack from malware?.

This never would have happened if Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet.

smn1256 Wrote:This never would have happened if Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet.

I bet the Pentagon investigation will show someone was watching virus laden porn at work..

WMD Owl Wrote:

smn1256 Wrote:This never would have happened if Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet.

I bet the Pentagon investigation will show someone was watching virus laden porn at work..

+1

First, if they hadn't already banned external devices, then they weren't taking security very seriously to begin with.

Second, I've misplaced my copy of the paper that details "why every alarmist computer security scarelore story in the media is necessarily unadulterated bunk", so I'm left to assert that it is. I don't remember the author off hand, either. But, idiotic press stories about unprecedented security problems that were really quite mundane are, well, not unprecedented to say the least.

The actual quotes in the Fox story are so generic and benign that they are probably verbatim text from any security policy that you could download off of the internet.

Unprecedented? The "first" virus was unprecedented. All subsequent ones were not.

First, the DoD has been very strict about these things for years. Thumbdrives have been banned for quite some time. Floppy discs and optical media are required to be scanned before use.

Banning them outright?
You guys have obviously not worked in such an environment.
The gov't lives for having information shuffled around (unfortunately). PPT is the currency of gov't agencies.
Not using CDs makes things VERY hard and very EXPENSIVE to get done.

I'm with DrTorch. They have disabled USB ports for years in any sensitive environments, many that aren't even sensitive networks (think of organizations that help the poor in other countries).

It's all about risk management. Banning USB drives mitigate the risk of data leakage as well as malware infections, so I don't think that's uncommon. Banning CDRoms seems kind of extreme, and not necessarily a good choice in terms of balancing risk versus cost, but that sort of analysis should have been done.

I45owl Wrote:It's all about risk management. Banning USB drives mitigate the risk of data leakage as well as malware infections, so I don't think that's uncommon. Banning CDRoms seems kind of extreme, and not necessarily a good choice in terms of balancing risk versus cost, but that sort of analysis should have been done.

CD Roms won't be banned. USB drives have been banned in sensitive environments for quite some time. There are, however, always exceptions. Could that change now? It could, sure, but CD ROMs will be around until there is something to replace them.