Network Security & Hardware - eWeek

Network Security & Hardware: Five Hacks That Will Challenge Obama's Cyber-security Plans


President Barack Obama has made cyber-security a priority since he took office in January. A month into his presidency, Obama appointed Melissa Hathaway to lead a review of the United States' cyber-security posture as acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security councils. On May 29, the administration released the report.

But the report comes after news of several hacking incidents targeting both the government and the nation's infrastructure made their way into the public eye during the past few months.

What are some of the major stories about hacks targeting U.S. government agencies and infrastructure in the past few years? eWEEK provides a short list of some of the better-known examples of hackers penetrating America's defenses in recent history.
 
  • Five Hacks That Will Challenge Obama's Cyber-security Plans
    by Brian Prince
  • Hackers Fly Off with Plans for Fighter Plane
    Hackers took advantage of network vulnerabilities of contractors involved in the development of the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project to get their hands on project data. U.S. military officials said they traced the penetration back with a high degree of certainty to known Chinese IP addresses, though the Chinese government denies any role in the attacks.
  • Mayday for the FAA
    A day after Obama ordered the 60-day review, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that hackers accessed an agency server and stole employee information. According to officials, two of the 48 files on the breached computer contained personal information for more than 45,000 FAA employees and retirees who were on the FAA's rolls as of the first week of February 2006.
  • Electric Grid Under Attack
    In April, news surfaced that hackers had planted malware on the U.S. power grid. Many of the intrusions were reportedly not detected by the companies running the grid, but by U.S. intelligence agencies.
  • First Cisco, Then NASA
    The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Swedish national Philip Gabriel Pettersson May 5 on charges of hacking into Cisco Systems' network in 2004 and swiping Cisco Internetwork Operating System code and then breaking into computers at the Ames Research Center and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, located at Moffett Field, Calif.
  • Malware Strikes Marshals Service
    On May 22, officials at the U.S. Marshals Service confirmed its systems were infected by the Neeris virus. At the same time, the FBI confirmed it was experiencing problems with e-mail, but did not disclose additional details.
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