back to article Pentagon email hacked, Russia already blamed

A chunk of the US Department of Defense's email system has been down for 11 days, following what appears to have been a successful attempt to hack it. On Thursday, DoD officials told The Register the unclassified email system of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff was compromised following a "sophisticated cyberattack" on …

  1. DerekCurrie
    FAIL

    So Pentagon: Is it because you need more money?

    Hell no. What you need is to catch up with the 21st century and take computer security seriously. Why, with all your military industrial complex money-out-the-ears can't you keep your computer systems secure, encrypted (See! Encryption is good!) and out of the hacking tentacles of the rest of the world? It's not because you're entirely stupid. But when it comes to computer technology, part of your organization just failed the Computer Literacy Test for the modern era. #MyStupidGovernment continues to be a mantra in the USA, certainly from me.

  2. Captain DaFt

    The attackers exploited "a new and different vulnerability,"

    Yeah, last time they simply typed in "Admin" and "passw0rd" and they were in.

    This time they had to call the helpdesk and ask, "What's the password for the admin account? Somebody changed it!",

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    From COCOM dom to collar-wearing sub

    Couldn't the US just retire from that bullshit "IT" thing? They are no longer able to handle it, politically or technically. Or mentally.

    1. R.P.Charlie

      Re: From COCOM dom to collar-wearing sub

      As we've seen, the US today is more into gender equality than technology, so it's to be expected.

      Out of respect for their thinking we should stop maligning the bull's excrement by comparing it to US IT and give the other gender an opportunity and call it cowshit.

      1. Hollerith 1

        Re: From COCOM dom to collar-wearing sub

        Nope, I'm still happy to call it bullshit.

  4. Stevie

    Bah!

    The only surprise here is that there is no attempt to blame The Thief -B-a-g-g-i-n-s Snowden for the break-in.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Bah!

      That may well be coming since he's in Russia.

  5. Bob Dole (tm)
    Coffee/keyboard

    The Hillary Option?

    Maybe the pentagon should consider the Hillary Option. Instead of using government email systems, sign up for a gmail account.

    Of course, it could just be that those email servers auto upgraded themselves to Windows 10 which dutifully started copying all the data back to MS servers.

    1. Hollerith 1

      Re: The Hillary Option?

      It worked for her.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I doubt it was a sophisticated attack

    More likely the Pentagon was doing something stupid like running Exchange 2003 and was shocked and appalled that someone dared to attack it using one of the dozens of known exploits.

    If it was a state actor who really wanted to disrupt the US military, they wouldn't waste a good hack until they needed it (i.e. when the US military was preparing to or in the process of attacking them or their allies)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @DougS +1 from me. The McKinnon case showed that US Government IT security was pretty much non-existent. Do you think the criminal barbarians often mis-named 'Islamic State' might be behind it, given they're not flavour of the month with most of the world just now?

  8. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Email administrator's worst nightmare - finding his/her email server compromised...

    Glad I don't do email admin anymore. And I don't miss it. But I learnt a lot, and developed skills around that.

    1. Blitheringeejit

      Likewise I'm sure

      The skill I developed from email admin was how to outsource. I'll do anything for money, but I won't do that.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The more one reads about things like this the more it appears that the US government really doesn't have a clew about the internet (it those big pipes you know) and how it works. When one gets to the government application of security to those big pipes they would be better off just placing a readme in the root telling everyone the password and listing what is on the server - sorry, is that what they are doing at the moment.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Russia ascendant

    It is becoming uncomfortably obvious - Russia holds the high ground in space and now cyberspace. Yet US foreign policy will continue its unilateral 'my way or the highway' stance until it runs into a wall.

    1. Fatman
      Coat

      Re: Russia ascendant

      <quote>Yet US foreign policy will continue its unilateral 'my way or the highway' stance until it runs into a wall off a cliff.</quote>

      FTFY

  11. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Oh do have some sympathy

    It must be a devil of a job having to decide who, of all the possibilities, to blame for their own shortcomings.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like