Pierluigi Paganini September 11, 2015

Another cyber attack hit computer systems at the Pentagon, this time the food court computers have been hacked exposing employees’ bank information.

In August, alleged Russian hackers have hacked an unclassified emailing server of the Pentagon, it was just one of the numerous attacks against the US Government systems.

According to the NBC news, US officials have reported that Russia launched a “sophisticated cyberattack” against the Pentagon’s Joint Staff unclassified email system. The unclassified email system has been shut down and taken offline for two weeks. The officials added that the cyber attack compromised data belonging to 4,000 military and civilian personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“According to the officials, the “sophisticated cyber intrusion” occurred sometime around July 25 and affected some 4,000 military and civilian personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”states the NCB news.

Now, reportedly the computer systems of Pentagon’s food court were breached by attackers and financial details of an unspecified number of employees have been compromised.

On Tuesday, the official spokesman of Defense Department, Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, confirmed the incident and the exposure of the credit card data of the employees who paid concessions at the Pentagon.

The US authorities have immediately notified the data breach to the employees who used either debit or credit card for the payments.

“”Within the past week, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency has received numerous reports of fraudulent use of credit cards belonging to Pentagon personnel. These individuals had fraudulent charges to their account soon after they had legitimate transactions at the Pentagon,” according to a copy of the notice to employees obtained by the Washington Examiner.”  

Crosson did not provide further information on the attack neither data on the number of employees affected, it is still unclear which food court was attacked by hackers.

The US government suffered several major cyber attacks recently, including the recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the network at the White House. In August, the New York Times published an article saying that the president of the United States, Barack Obama took the decision to retaliate against China, after the famous hack of the OPM, leaving in the wild over 20 million personal records.

In April, the President Barack Obama has signed an executive order that uses economic restrictions to “control” anyone that is trying to attack any American interests.

The news of this new attack comes a few days after the announcement that the US Government is considering sanctions against both Russian and Chinese hackers in response to the hacking campaign targeting US entities.

The news was reported by several U.S. officials yesterday who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Obama administration was already considering to punish hackers and organizations targeting US entities, recently it proposed sanctions for Chinese hackers and individuals and firms from other nations responsible for cyber attacks against American commercial companies.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Information Warfare, Pentagon)