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U.S. officials tell NBC News that Russia launched a "sophisticated cyberattack" against the Pentagon's Joint Staff unclassified email system, which has been shut down and taken off line for nearly two weeks. According to the officials, the "sophisticated cyber intrusion" occurred sometime around July 25 and affected some 4,000 military and civilian personnel work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Sources tell NBC News that it appears the cyberattack relied on some kind of automated system that rapidly gathered massive amounts of data and within a minute distributed all the information to thousands of accounts on the Internet. The officials also report the suspected Russian hackers coordinated the sophisticated cyberassault via encrypted accounts on social media.

While the officials say its not clear whether the attack was sanctioned by the Russian government or conducted by individuals given the scope of the attack, "It was clearly the work of a state actor."
The officials stress that no classified information was seized or compromised and that only unclassified accounts and emails were hacked.

Almost immediately after the cyberattack was detected the Pentagon took the aggressive step of shutting down the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system and Internet during its investigation. The system should be back on line before the end of this week.

This story is developing. Please check back for further updates.



http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/06/russia-hacks-pentagon-computers-nbc-citing-sources.html?__source=newsletter|breakingnews

I often wonder if the US employs cyber security tactics the same as other countries use against us. Actually, I'm quite certain we do (we'd be stupid not to when everyone is trying to break our systems), but we never seem to hear about it, which raises three obvious initial suppositions:

1) Our hackers are too good to get caught.

2) Our hackers are detected by foreign governments, but disclosure of this fact would embarrass or weaken political power figures in these countries, so the detections are not disclosed.

3) Our hackers are detected by foreign governments and they disclose this fact, but Western Media doesn't report it for any of a myriad of reasons.

Which of these do you think is most likely?

This stuff goes on all the time and the reason it is not reported is because the general population would freak out. I am certain this is not the first incident and not the last that somebody is trying to hack the government.

#3 I'd say.

I think that's the easiest one to disprove though as well. If other non-Western media was reporting it, it would be easy to find on the internet if you looked for it.

True. I dunno if this got played in the US at all, I found out about it on this forum: Your hard drives were RIDDLED with NSA SPYWARE for YEARS (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/17/kaspersky_labs_equation_group/)

I never heard about it here, in the US, but maybe I missed their news of it. Even if it was reported, it may have been buried quickly.

/tinfoilon

4) False flag

/tinfoiloff