The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department. The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.
The Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Hackers from numerous locations in China spent several months probing the Pentagon system before overcoming its defences.
The Pentagon took down the network for more than a week while the attacks continued, and is to conduct a comprehensive diagnosis. These are multiple wake up calls stirring us to levels of more aggressive vigilance, said Richard Lawless, the Pentagon’s top Asia official at the time of the attacks.
The Pentagon is still investigating how much data was downloaded. The event had forced officials to reconsider the kind of information they send over unsecured email systems.
The National Security Council said the White House had created a team of experts to consider whether the administration needed to restrict the use of BlackBerries because of concerns about cyber espionage.
