Lockheed Martin says hit by cyber incident

Lockheed Martin Corp  said on Saturday it had thwarted “a significant and tenacious attack” on its information systems network a week ago but was still working to restore employee access.

The Department of Homeland Security, said together with the Defense Department had offered to help curb the risk from the incident.

The Defense Department said in statement late Saturday night that it was working with Lockheed to determine the scope of the attack. The incident’s impact on the department is “minimal and we don’t expect any adverse effect,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham said by email. She declined to specify the nature of the impact, saying that as a matter of policy, the department does not comment on operational matters.

“As a result of the swift and deliberate actions taken to protect the network and increase IT security, our systems remain secure,” Jennifer Whitlow, a Lockheed spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. “No customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised.”

There was no word on what information may have been compromised in the attack nor where it may have originated. Military contractors’ systems contain technical specifications on weapons under development as well as those currently in use.

The U.S. government has offered to help Lockheed analyze “available data in order to provide recommendations to mitigate further risk,” Chris Ortman, a DHS official, said in an e-mailed reply to a query from Reuters.

A person with direct knowledge told Reuters on Friday that an intrusion at Lockheed was related to a recent breach of “SecurID” token authentication technology from EMC Corp’s EMC.N RSA security division.

Cyber intruders were reported in 2009 to have broken into computers holding data on Lockheed’s projected $380 billion-plus F-35 fighter program, the Pentagon’s costliest arms purchase.

No customer, program or employee personal data was compromised thanks to “almost immediate” protective action taken after the attack was detected May 21, Jennifer Whitlow, a company spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.

She said the company, the world’s biggest aerospace company and the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, was working around the clock to restore employee access to the targeted network while maintaining the highest security level.

Lockheed is the maker of the F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets as well as warships and other multibillion-dollar arms systems sold worldwide.

CYBER ESPIONAGE

U.S. officials may investigate a cyber breach at a company’s request. DHS, the lead agency for securing federal civilian networks, can deploy a team to analyze infected systems, develop mitigation strategies, advise on efforts to restore service and make recommendations for improving overall network security.

Several top cybersecurity experts with extensive government dealings said they were in the dark about the origin of the attack.

“I think it tells us that DHS doesn’t know much about what’s going on either,” said Anup Ghosh, a former senior scientist at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who worked on securing military networks.

Ghosh, who now runs Invincea, a software security company, said there had been a string of intrusions against defense contractors, security companies and U.S. government labs, including the U.S. Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, since the start of this year.

These attacks typically were carried out through so-called “spear-phish” inducements to click on a certain link to web sites or through emailed attachments carrying malicious code.

Once so compromised, a computer can surreptitiously download other code that can log a victim’s key strokes, giving an attacker a path to potentially wide network access.

Source: Tom Reynolds Andrea Shalal-Esa and Jim Finkle (REUTERS) & Lockheed Martin Corp