Report: Northrop Grumman latest military contractor to be hacked

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Just days after news that top military contractors Lockheed Martin and L-3 were targets of hacking attacks, news today that defense supplier Northrop Grumman Corp. may also have been hit with a network intrusion related to an earlier breach of RSA's SecurID system. From Fox News:

Lockheed Martin said its network had been compromised last week, and defense contractor L-3 Communications was targeted recently, as well. Both intrusions involved the use of remote-access security tokens, experts say.

On May 26, Northrop Grumman shut down remote access to its network without warning — catching even senior managers by surprise and leading to speculation that a similar breach had occurred.

"We went through a domain name and password reset across the entire organization," the source told FoxNews.com. "This caught even my executive management off guard and caused chaos."

"I've been here a good amount of time and they've never done anything this way — we always have advanced notice," the person said, speculating that the surprise action was a response to a similar network assault.

And Kevin Poulsen at Wired News has a related report up with more details about the attack on L-3.

(via Kevin Poulsen)