US Military 'Hacked' by Emails

An anonymous reader writes "Two of the US Military's most important science labs were apparently 'hacked'. Phishing mail was sent to a pair of research labs, where trojan programs allowed interlopers access to the otherwise secure networks. One of the sites was the infamous Los Alamos, which has been discussed many times here at Slashdot for its string of security breaches. 'Los Alamos has a checkered security history, having suffered a sequence of embarrassing breaches in recent years. In August of this year, it was revealed that the lab had released sensitive nuclear research data by email, while in 2006 a drug dealer was allegedly found with a USB stick containing data on nuclear weapons tests. "This appears to be a new low, even drug dealers can get classified information out of Los Alamos," Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), said at the time. Two years earlier, the lab was accused of having lost hard disks.'"

Comments

the information almost certainly wasn't classified

[Brett Buck]

No one can hack into a classified (Secret or above) network from the outside by sending them emails or anything else - *because classified networks are not connected to the outside world*.

        Brett

Re:shut er down!

[gardyloo]

Is it really worth pouring more money into this idiotville if every bit of scientific progress they make is practically public knowledge soon after? Yes. I work at LANL; very many of us work on unclassified projects, and we're happy if the progress we make is public knowledge. It wouldn't be of very much use otherwise.

      Note that the /. summary is technically correct (yes, the Lab was accused -- do some research if you want to know why I italicized that -- of losing hdds years ago), but not very illuminative.

      More recently, we're moving to some different networking configurations to help cut down on some of these breaches. It may help; it may not. Foreign nationals are losing administrator priveleges on their own (unclassified, mind you) computers, which is causing LOTS of headaches and won't solve a damned thing. Many of them have sent messages saying, "Yeah, remove my access, and see how much work gets done." If we had a moderation system here, those would be +5 Damned Right.

Re:Minor bureacratic technicality to point out...

[momerath2003]

You are correct that they're run by the DoE -- and it's not merely a technicality.

I've worked at Oak Ridge -- it's not a weapons lab. A huge fraction of the work that goes on there is related to energy sustainability and production. This includes materials research and reactor simulation for next-generation nuclear reactors, but it also includes solar energy, wind power, coal, oil, hydrogen, etc. It does do homeland security-related stuff, specifically with detectors (to monitor ports for incoming reactor materials, etc.) but it's definitely not a military lab. I've worked at a weapons lab before -- it's a completely different environment. There was no military-style regimentation at ORNL.