Yesterday, news broke that Russia is the main suspect in launching a sophisticated cyber attack against the Pentagon. This international hacking confirmed what many of us in the tech industry already knew: nation is on the cyber warpath against nation.
According to leading mainstream US news agencies like NBC News, US officials accuse Russia of cyber attacking the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of ?Staff unclassified mail system. Thanks to the hack, this email system had to be shut down for two weeks. Officials say the intrusion happened around July 25 and around 4,000 Joint Chiefs of Staff employees were hit. Sources say the hacking started with an automated system that gathered overwhelming data in a matter of one minute. Then that overwhelming data was distributed, all at once, to thousands of machines and accounts throughout the Internet. Officials say Russian hackers pulled it off through encrypted social media. Authorities aren’t claiming the Russian government had anything to do with this cyber attack…at least not aloud. But some officials say, “It was clearly the work of a state actor.” Authorities also insists it was only unclassified email accounts that got hacked. No classified emails were in danger or compromised. The email system should be back to normal in the very near future. It may be already be.
It shouldn’t be surprising at all this was an international attack. China has been accused of hacking several US institutions over the years. And look at the tensions between the US and Russia over the past several years. ?Some foreign relation experts fear we’re slipping back into the Cold War. But what is a surprise is that it made national news. Often times this would only make tech news. I guess they don’t want to scare the masses. What Russian entity do you think is responsible? Or is there something ‘the authorities’ aren’t telling us?