Americas

Home page

Americas

Chinese military â€˜hacked into Pentagonâ€™

04 September 2007 14:11 (UTC +04:00)

The Chinese military shut down the Pentagonâ€™s computer network for more than a week during an unprecedented cyber attack, according to leaked reports of an internal investigation.
Officially, the US Department of Defense will only acknowledge that it turned off part of a system including the computer used by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
However, officials claim the Peopleâ€™s Liberation Army (PLA) have been implicated.
A few days before the Pentagon breach, Chinese hackers were accused of infiltrating German government computers.
The PLA regularly scans US military networks and the Pentagon is widely assumed to probe Chinese networks, but US officials said the penetration in June heightened concerns because of fears China had demonstrated the ability to disrupt the network at critical times.
â€œThe PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system...and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and disrupt on a very large scale,â€ said a former official, who said the PLA had penetratedâ€‰theâ€‰networksâ€‰of US defense companies and think-tanks. /APA/