http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/military-not-quite-sure-how-drone-cockpits-got-infected/ By Noah Shachtman Danger Room Wired.com October 19, 2011 It’s been more than a month since a virus infected the remote “cockpits” of America’s drone fleet. And the U.S. military still doesn’t know exactly how the machines at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada got infected. “We’re not quite sure how that happened yet,” General Robert Kehler told reporters Tuesday. Kehler is the head of U.S. Strategic Command, which is nominally in charge of the military’s Cyber Command and all other online activities. “It was a virus that we believe at this point entered from the wild, if you will, not specifically targeted at the RPA (remotely piloted aircraft) activities but entered through some other process,” he added. The Pentagon is ordinarily reluctant to talk about any computer security breaches; even routine infections are treated as military secrets. For example, the clean-up of a common, if widespread, worm was considered a classified mission — undertaken under the name “Operation Buckshot Yankee.” When Kehler’s predecessor mentioned the phrase at a conference in May of 2010, several people in the room gasped at the seeming indiscretion. But the drone cockpit virus has already received so much publicity that the military decided to speak up, just a little. Last Wednesday, the Air Force issued a press release calling the infection “more of a nuisance than an operational threat.” An anonymous defense official told the Associated Press that the malware “is routinely used to steal log-in and password data from people who gamble or play games like Mafia Wars online.” [...] _____________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isnReceived on Thu Oct 20 2011 - 01:56:41 PDT
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