Pentagon Detected 360 Million Attempts to Penetrate its Networks in 2008
Well, it seems that the recent breach of the Joint Fighter Strike project was not the first cyber attack against the Department of Defense. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the Pentagon confirmed that it detected 360 million attempts to penetrate its networks in 2008, which is up from six million in 2006. The Department of Defense also disclosed that it had spent $100 million in the past six months repairing damage from these cyber attacks.
While we are not surprised that the Joint Strike Fighter breach was not the only attempt at attacking the Pentagon’s networks, we are astounded by the sheer volume of attacks. We are also curious to hear how the 2009 numbers will shake out, which will surely be an increase in the 2008. Also, $100 million dollars is a significant investment for the Department of Defense, but surely they will need to pore even more resources into fighting this battle.
We are still anxiously await the results of the Obama administration recently completed a 60-day review of the government’s efforts to protect key public and private networks. And, fortunately, the Pentagon will be creating a new “cyber command” for defending the Pentagon computer networks and improve U.S. offensive capabilities. So, our government is moving forward with addressing this issue.
Interesting times we live in right now. We will keep you posted on the results of the 60-day cyber review.
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“Wow” at the volume, and “wow” to the DoD cost.
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Jason Liszkiewicz
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The number of attacks is not much of a surprise in this day of global networks.
But the $100 million spent on repairing damage is a concern. It suggests that attacks are too often successful. Are our defenses that bad? Passwords too easy to guess?
From Linked-In:
I would like to see the statistics on the country of origin for these attacks. I realize that many, if not most are performed by ‘bots, but there has to be some finger-prints on these attacks.
From Linked-In:
Well…..
When the US Government will start looking to its allies for assistance we have a system that can protect organization much better than any other know technologies.
We are waiting….
From Linked-In:
Interesting article. We all know they exist from the Pentagon to the Electric Grids to Organized crime holding medical records hostage. It is obvious that the current methodology is ineffective in securing our data and we just keep netcentric’ing more and more without taking security into account. Sounds like more of the same old Business as Usual (BaU) of Risk Management instead of an actual solution.