Lockheed-Martin the weapons maker – Hacked!

As upsetting on a personal level as the whole hacking of Sony’s Playstation Network might have been it pales in comparison to the news from Reuters that government weapons contractor Lockheed-Martin has been hacked.

We don’t have any word that any data was compromised and Lockheed-Martin is keeping pretty closed mouth on the report but according to Reuters’ the attack looks to be a direct result of a previously confirmed security breach at EMC; which is the company that provides Lockheed-Martin’s SecurID tokens.

During the attack on EMC this past March, hackers were apparently able to steal information which allowed them to produce their own passcodes. This breach was followed by a string of phishing and malware attacks designed to match tokens to users, and thus circumvent the system.

As of yet, the motivations behind the attacks remain unknown. It should be noted that while the report specifically mentions Lockheed-Martin, many other organizations employee the SecurID system and are potential targets. One possibly motivation behind the attacks could be espionage; Lockheed-Martin, for instance, is developing both the F-35 Lightning II and the F-22, the two newest fighter jets in the U.S. fleet. Some commentators have already speculated that similar attacks in previous years may have contributed to the development of China’s J-20 stealth jet.

via Geekosystem