The officials said no classified information was seized or compromised but that the Pentagon decided to shut down the entire email system during its investigation. The email system has been offline since the breach was first detected, but is expected to come back online by Friday of this week.
This story is developing.
The email system used by the group was compromised in the last week of July, according to reports by NBC News and the Daily Beast.
The system has been unplugged for about two weeks, the attack occurred around July 25.
While most reports point the finger towards Russian hackers, AFP is blaming the famed Chinese espionage program, which has been very active in the US lately, recently getting their hands on government personnel records.
“Adversaries should know that our preference for deterrence and our defensive posture don’t diminish our willingness to use cyber options if necessary”, Mr. Carter said in prepared remarks during an April address at Stanford University, according to Reuters.
It was a so-called spear-phishing attack in which people are tricked into opening bogus emails which then infect the network.
That being said, the attack was said to have been carried out by an automated system.
A Department of Defence spokesperson said: “Joint Staff unclassified networks for all users are now down”. “While any intrusion or attack upon our networks is troubling, each attempt to intrude upon our networks offers a learning opportunity to improve our ability to effectively respond and bolster our cyber defenses and network security”.
Song argued that the only way for organisations to minimise the impact of cyber attacks is to ensure that their cyber defences are as secure as possible.
“Our top priority is to restore services as quickly as police”.
“We can not keep having the same weekly conversation about cybersecurity”, said Splunk’s senior VP of security markets, Haiyan Song.
“It is the responsibility of government and industry to work together and find comprehensive policy and technology solutions that better equip agencies’ security teams”.
