Hackers break into Pentagon computers

Hackers broke into Pentagon’s .......

NEW YORK Computer spies have broken into Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project – the Defence Department’s costliest weapons programme ever, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday citing current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.The newspaper said the specific identity of the attackers, and the scope of the damage to the defence programme, either in financial or security terms, was still not known. In addition, while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, but they weren’t able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.Former US officials claimed that the attacks appeared to have originated in China. However, it can be extremely difficult to determine the true origin because it is easy to mask identities online. 

A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made ‘steady progress’ in developing online-warfare techniques.However, Chinese embassy told WSJ in a statement that China ‘opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes’. It called the Pentagon’s report ‘a product of the Cold War mentality’ and said the allegations of cyber espionage were ‘intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations’.WSJ claimed similar incidents had breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months.  In the case of the fighter-jet programme, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft. The newspaper said the latest intrusions provided new evidence that a battle was heating up between the US and potential adversaries over the data networks that tied the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the US electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad.