Russian Federation is being accused of launching a “sophisticated” attack against the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff email system, according to a report published overnight be NBC News.
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The official went on to say that due to the sophistication of the attack: “It was clearly the work of a state actor”.
The Pentagon’s email system has been shut down for nearly two weeks following a cyber intrusion which is believed to have originated in Russian Federation.
In late April, U.S. Protection Secretary Ash Carter blamed Russian hackers for a cyber intrusion on an unclassified U.S. army community this yr, saying they found an previous vulnerability that had not been patched.
Andy Heather, VP EMEA at HP Security Voltage, also offered the following analysis: “Cyber attacks are a real and present danger, whatever the source”.
“We continue to identify and mitigate cybersecurity risks across our networks”, said Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson.
A senior Defense official said while more sophisticated attacks on the military’s computer networks have been blunted in the past, this cyber attack used an approach that had not been seen before.
The classified network used by the Joint Chiefs is said to be unaffected and no classified information has been stolen or otherwise compromised. In the days following the aggressive decision to shut the email network, the Pentagon has gone about cleaning out the system entirely to ensure that it is secure once it goes online again. The Joint Staff took its unclassified e-mail system off line because of some suspicious probes over the weekend of July 25. “Rarely are you ever able to say with 100 percent certainty” who was behind a particular incident, the official said. It first acknowledged on July 28 that the unclassified networks of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff was taken offline after suspicious activity.
DOD is working to restore email services as quickly as possible, CNN said.
“We can not keep having the same weekly conversation about cyber security”.
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No report is “brave” enough to point the finger at the Russian government since no official evidence exists that the attack was the work of an official agency or of a rogue group.
