Pentagon confirms email system hacked

[bemildred]

Source: Seems to be Raw Story, but they cite CNN too.

The Pentagon confirmed that its e-mail system was hacked, CNN reported Thursday afternoon.

"Here at the Pentagon, officials are confirming that they've been hacked," a CNN news anchor reported. "It's actually a fairly serious matter."

The report continued, "About one third of the computer users here in the Pentagon that work for Defense Secretary Robert Gates had their email system penetrated."

According to CNN, the Pentagon's computer server was taken off line on Wednesday, along with the email server.

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Pentagon_confirms_email_system_hacked_0621.html

[MNDemNY]

1. By the White House, maybe?

[global1]

2. Rove Probably Realized That Some E-Mails Of His Were Sent To Rummy......

and this hacking was a 'cleansing operation'.

[Ian David]

3. Did the Army fire all the gay security anti-intrusion experts along with the gay Arab translators?

This can NOT be good.

[Ian David]

4. Peter Pace set the Pentagon's Password to "Joshua."

[John Kerry VonErich]

15. Luckily we can divert it by playing Tic Tac Toe.

nt

[BootinUp]

5. More ridiculous incompetence n/t

[TexasLawyer]

6. But, thank God-- at least we know

that voting machines and central vote tabulators cannot be hacked! Special software, you know.



:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

[ClintonTyree]

7. "It's actually a fairly serious matter."

No Screaming Shit! :banghead: Is there ANYTHING the Bush Administration has touched that HASN'T turned to shit? :wtf:

Imagine, if you will, this happening while a Democrat was in the White House. :nuke: The Reich-Wing "think tanks" would be burning up the airwaves. Billo's veins would be popping out of his skull. Hannity's hair would actually move. Limbaugh's fat rolls would be rippling out of control. But what do we hear? (crickets chirping). Nothing. Not a word. Everything is just fine because George W. Bush is on the job. :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[calimary]

11. No Screaming Shit, INDEED!

"...actually a fairly serious matter." The Pentagon gets itself hacked.

This particular Pentagon, by the way, brought to you by the republi-CON National Committee. This is not happening on a Democrat's watch. Let's not forget that, and let's not hesitate to remind people of that. This has happened on a republi-CON's watch. This is ALL YOURS, mccain, mcconnell, boehner, all their little friends in the wrong-wing media, and all their other little friends who aspire to be the new bush (even if they paint it all up trying to make themselves look like a new reagan). Repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. Til we have a strong media pushing these frames or even giving them exposure, WE will have to do it OURSELVES.

[debbierlus]

8. Isn't this a national security matter? INCOMPETENT

[superconnected]

9. Most likely run by bush appointees.

I'm always amazed by their incompetence.

[fightthegoodfightnow]

10. National Security .....Indeed

Let's spend billions abroad to secure another nation while our own faces security breaches.

[CabalPowered]

12. Anyone heard what's happening in Estonia

I caught a blurb on BBC radio several days ago. I didn't know it but Estonia is very wired, including the gov't. Anyways, someone turned the botnets on them and brought them to a standstill. The report I was listening to, the only option they had left was to disable access to all IPs outside of Estonia just to bring systems back online. Here's the only article that google kicks out..

http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=21765

Between that, the DHS break-in and now the Pentagon, I'd say something is up.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I'm surprised that's the only article you found

But perhaps you were looking in Google News ,which only goes a month back. It happened around the end of April and beginning of May. Look in the main part of Google, and you'll get stories like this:

The attacks began on April 27, a Friday, within hours of the war memorial's relocation. On Russian-language Internet forums, Estonian officials say, instructions were posted on how to disable government Web sites by overwhelming them with traffic, a tactic known as a denial of service attack.

The Web sites of the Estonian president, the prime minister, Parliament and government ministries were quickly swamped with traffic, shutting them down. Hackers defaced other sites, putting, for instance, a Hitler mustache on the picture of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip on his political party's Web site.

The assault continued through the weekend. "It was like an Internet riot," said Hillar Aarelaid, a lead specialist at Estonia's Computer Emergency Response Team, which headed the government's defense.

The Estonian government began blocking Internet traffic from Russia on April 30 by filtering out all Web addresses that ended in .ru.

By April 30, Aarelaid said, security experts noticed increasing sophistication. Government Web sites and new targets, including media Web sites, came under attack from electronic cudgels known as botnets. Bots are computers that can be remotely commanded to participate in an attack. They can be business or home computers, and they are known as zombie computers.

http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5941544

Teenager Detained For Attacks On Estonian Computers

May 5, 2007 -- Police have detained a 19-year-old Tallinn resident who is suspected of involvement in a wave of attacks against Estonian computer servers.

A spokesperson for the Estonian prosecutor's office said the young man -- an ethnic Russian -- was posting calls to organize mass attacks against Estonian servers on Internet forums.

Many government sites in Estonia have been forced to shut down during the past week because of the attacks which followed the removal of a Soviet war memorial from the center of Tallinn.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/05/AF23C86E-1F23-46B4-88BF-2ABDB4C618B8.html

There was talk that the attacks were actually coordinated from Russian government computers, but I doubt they'd be able to prove that.

[CabalPowered]

16. Thanks for the info

That was indeed the only article I could find on the event. Have they completely resolved this? It sounded like in the bbc broadcast that they were still dealing with it. I heard the broadcast about a week ago.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. The last I heard was when they arrested the one guy

Estonia wanted some pressure put on Russia at the G8 meeting (see http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/06/DB2BB565-36F0-43BD-844A-7E65010D9624.html ), but nothing much seemed to come of that.

[BikeWriter]

14. Cover up! Hold someone accountable today!

[mainegreen]

17. 'China calling' n/t