NYT: The 2008 Military Computer Attack Finally Confirmed by "Top Pentagon Official"

[Turborama]

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: August 25, 2010

WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official has confirmed a previously classified incident that he describes as “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever,” a 2008 episode in which a foreign intelligence agent used a flash drive to infect computers, including those used by the Central Command in overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plugging the cigarette-lighter-sized flash drive into an American military laptop at a base in the Middle East amounted to “a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” according to William J. Lynn 3d, deputy secretary of defense, writing in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

“It was a network administrator’s worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary,” Mr. Lynn wrote.

The incident was first reported in November 2008 by the Danger Room blog of Wired magazine, and then in greater detail by The Los Angeles Times, which said that the matter was sufficiently grave that President George W. Bush was briefed on it. The newspaper mentioned suspicions of Russian involvement.

Full article with embedded links: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/26cyber.html?ref=technology

[Urban Prairie]

1. W was briefed on it?

Why?? The "Decider" delegated virtually every problem that was tossed on his desk, and was in his jammies by 9 pm almost every night.

Any laptop that I would use even semi-regularly, I would certainly notice and be very suspicious of a "cigarette-lighter" sized flash drive sticking out of the frigging side of it. Whoever used that laptop and didn't notice or become wary of that device must have been pretty damned stupid or not very computer-savvy. Probably some luddite high-ranking officer who used it, but didn't really know how to operate it and had an assistant help him or her. I remember watching ex-governor Rod Blagojevich on Celebrity Apprentice comically attempt to use a laptop, he was completely clueless..heh!!

[tanyev]

2. Did Dubya understand a word of what he was briefed on?

Geez.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "Hey, I am a wiz computatorist. Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

"Doubtify me? Bwaaa ha ha ha. Well, maybe not, but not important for the 'elite' Overlords like myself (Smirk). We haz RepubliMinons to do our bidding. Check your eeee-lection results. All your eeeee-lection results are belong to us Republicon Homelanders. Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

[LawnKorn]

4. Bush had to be interrupted during his vacation at Crawford

Then the brass had to wait until he sobered up. A one hour briefing took two days and Bush still could not grasp that computers could be carried around and operate on battery power.