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Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Lockheed Martin Suffers Cyberattack

A major online attack was launched earlier this month against the networks of Lockheed Martin, the country's largest defense contractor. As a result, the company said, "our systems remain secure; no customer, program, or employee personal data has been compromised."

Hackers reportedly exploited Lockheed's VPN access system, which allows employees to log in remotely by using their RSA SecurID hardware tokens. That suggests that whoever attacked Lockheed Martin may also have been behind the successful breach in March of EMC's RSA division, which manufactures SecurID.

What types of information might attackers have been targeting? Lockheed Martin, which earned revenue of $45.8 billion in 2010, makes everything from Trident missiles and F-22 fighter jets to a network of satellites for the Department of Defense that are designed to support high-priority wartime communications.

Lockheed Martin's swift detection of the attack helped avert potential disaster. The company then informed all remote workers that they'd receive new RSA SecurID tokens and told all 133,000 employees to reset their network passwords.

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