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Ministry of Defence top secret systems hacked, head of cyber security reveals

  • Cyber attacks are ‘still on an upward curve’, says chief
  • MoD budget to include new money to improve defences

By
Simon Tomlinson


PUBLISHED:

03:06 EST, 4 May 2012

|

UPDATED:

06:06 EST, 4 May 2012


‘Vulnerabilities’: The British military’s head of cyber security Major General Jonathan Shaw (above) says the Ministry of Defence has been attacked by hackers

Cyber criminals have managed to hack into some of the Ministry of Defence’s top secret computer systems, the military’s head of cyber-security has admitted.

Major General Jonathan Shaw said the number of serious incidents was ‘quite small’, but conceded it was likely that some attacks had gone undetected.

Maj Gen Shaw said the level of cyber
attacks were ‘still on an upward curve’, meaning increasing the security
of the military’s computer networks was now a top priority.

The admission comes just days after
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was forced to take its website
offline after being targeted by hackers.

In March, it emerged that senior British military figures and MoD staff
opened themselves up to potential security breaches by accepting friend
requests from a bogus Facebook account set up in the name of Nato’s top
commander.

It was also revealed earlier this year how British military officials and civil
servants in the Cabinet Office were victims of cyber group Anonymous that hacked into a
U.S. intelligence firm’s computers over Christmas.

Maj Gen Shaw said: ‘The number of serious incidents is quite small, but it is there. And those are the ones we know about. The likelihood is there are problems in there we don’t know about.’

Maj Gen Shaw, a veteran of the Falklands and Iraq wars, did not say who was behind the attacks on the MoD.

He said that next year’s MoD budget was expected to include new money to improve cyber-defence despite widespread cutbacks.

‘Need to engage’: The MoD’s headquarters in Whitehall. The department is expected to get new money in its budget to improve cyber-defence

‘I think it was a surprise to people this
year quite how vulnerable we are, which is why the measures have
survived so long in the (budget) because people have become aware of the
vulnerabilities and are taking them seriously,’ he said in an interview with The Guardian.

Maj Gen Shaw, who has spent the last year reviewing the MoD’s approach to cyber-security, also said the MoD had to embrace unconventional ideas and develop an array of its own cyber-weapons if it wanted to catch up with and then stay ahead of its rivals.

‘One needs to engage in internal defence and be quite aggressive about it. And if you are going to manoeuvre in cyberspace, that is something that obviously involves action across the spectrum.’

Earlier this week, SOCA was forced to take its website offline after being targeted by cyber criminals.

It was the victim of a scam known as
distributed denial of service (DDOS) whereby an internet address is
flooded with bogus traffic, effectively making it unreachable.

Breached: Last month, the Home Office website went down after an apparent cyber attack by hacking group Anonymous (above)

The Home Office website also went down last month after an apparent cyber attack in protest against Government surveillance plans.

A message on Twitter claiming to be from Anonymous, a loosely organised group of hackers who promote access to free speech, information and transparency, said the action was ‘for [the Home Office’s] draconian surveillance proposals’.

Over Christmas, the online ‘hacktivist’ group also claimed via Twitter on that it had stolen a trove of emails and credit card information from U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor’s member subscribers.

Details of senior British intelligence officials and U.S. defence staff were hacked, according to analysis by John Bumgarner, an expert in cyber-security at the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a research body in Washington.

Some 221 British military officials and 242 NATO staff were also victims along with advisers to Britain’s Joint Intelligence Organisation, a body which reports sensitive information to Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr Bumgarner found.

In March, it was revealed that Nato’s most senior commander had been embroiled in a major security alert after a fake Facebook account was set up in his name by ‘Chinese spies’.

Senior British military officers and Ministry of Defence staff are understood to have accepted ‘friend requests’ from a bogus account for Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis.

In the mistaken belief they had linked up with the American admiral on the site, they then unwittingly provided a treasure trove of personal details – including pictures, phone numbers and email addresses.

Nato did officially say who was behind the cyber-fraud or who accepted friend requests but it is understood that evidence points to Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

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You have to laugh the way they call themselves a National Security Unit

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Better scrap extraditing GARY M to the states then an give him a job advising on security because obviously the uni geeks are not up to the job.We need dark net experts back bedroom geeks and criminals working for the mod as obviously they are one step ahead of the paid plonkers running things.

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I don’t know if it’s just me or otheres think it too, but linking any of the countries important services to the net is prety much the dumbest thing todo, the security threat isn’t the hackers, it’s those who choose to put everything within a web address reach, they should use a different network and the amount of money wasted, it shouldn’t be too difficult to have there own…ipv4 can’t use ipv6 so maybe they should invest in a ipv7 or something along those lines so the average net user can’t reach it…all we need now are a few advanced cyborgs and then skynet can take over…skynet is effectivly the internet but with cyborgs…while im sure were many moons away for a terminator style problem, at the progress rate of modern technology, the future may make it possible…and i know that sound barmy, as allot of things did in the past that have now came true…

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Time was when the military here had its OWN telephone system, separate from the ordinary civil system. […] As the company CEO said, “If it ain’t connected to the phone, they can’t get into it…….” There must still be some merit in that……..? – (Old) Robert , Worcester UK, ++ There is a substantial difference between a dial up account and the net. Although the net is still accessible through dial up networking, it is an altogether different animal. However, there is much to be said for having separate networks for classified material to (e.g.) web servers. Demon Internet made a point, from the very start, of keeping customer data on an intranet which (used, I do not know about their current setup) to be completely unconnected with the ‘internet’. Had, e.g., Boeing implemented such a policy then classified data would not have been taken from their servers. It is a matter of commonsense, and thus no surprise at all that it has escaped so many apparently fine minds.

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If they’ve been hacked they’re not top secret then, are they?

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How ironic would it be, if it was someone based in the US and we managed to catch them. I’m sure some people would change their mind on extradition then.

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Why bother hacking the MOD, they lose that many laptops there is no need.

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Time was when the military here had its OWN telephone system, separate from the ordinary civil system. One wonders if it is time to reinstate it and at the same time cut off all use of wireless connection……..? I recall an American company I regularly worked with, which had “dealings” at a very high level with the US DoD, had to have a “front” computer system accessed in the normal way and an “internal” system which could not be accessed by anyone outside it. As the company CEO said, “If it ain’t connected to the phone, they can’t get into it…….” There must still be some merit in that……..?

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As the British military’s head of cyber security Major General Jonathan Shaw and his department haven’t done a very good job have they. Still I expect in their objectives for the year they forecast hacking so will receive a nice bonus or title!!

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