The hacking of more than two dozen major weapons systems would speed China's military build-up and damage the backbone of the Pentagon's regional missile defence for Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf, The Washington Post reported yesterday.
The revelation came in a leaked section of a Defence Science Board report for the Pentagon. The publicly released version of the report
warned in January that the US was unprepared for a cyber war.
The newly revealed section involves a list of compromised systems, including those for the
advanced Patriot missile program, known as
PAC-3; an army system for shooting down ballistic missiles, known as the
Terminal High Altitude Area Defence; and the US Navy's
Aegis ballistic-missile defence system, the Post reported.
..Also hacked were crucial combat aircraft and ships such as the
F/A-18 fighter jet, the
V-22 Osprey, the
Black Hawk helicopter and the
US Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship, which is designed to patrol waters close to shore, the Post said.
The most expensive weapons system ever built - the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, on track to cost about
$US1.4 trillion ($1.45 trillion) and which Australia intends to purchase -
was on the list. However, the 2007 hack of that project was reported previously.
The report did not accuse the Chinese of stealing the designs but experts told the newspaper that the vast majority were part of a widening Chinese espionage campaign. US research company Mandiant claimed in February that a Chinese army unit had stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organisations, mostly based in the US.
It followed a US congressional report last year naming China as "the most threatening actor in cyberspace".
The revelation comes a day after Four Corners reported that Chinese hackers had stolen top-secret blueprints of ASIO's new intelligence agency headquarters.
The ABC program said the documents taken in an attack on a contractor included cable layouts for the huge building's security and communications systems, its floor plan and its server locations.
A spokesman for the Pentagon refused to discuss the list from the Science Board report, but the Post quoted him as saying: "The Department of Defence has growing concerns about the global threat to economic and national security from persistent cyber-intrusions aimed at the theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and commercial data, which threatens the competitive edge of US businesses like those in the Defence Industrial Base."
The public version of the Science Board report said in January that such cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage could impose "severe consequences for US forces engaged in combat", the Post said.
Those consequences could include severed communication links, data corruption that could misdirect US operations and weapons failing to operate as intended. Planes, satellites or drones could crash, the report said.
The list did not describe the extent or timing of the hacking or whether the theft occurred via government computer networks, defence contractors or subcontractors, the Post said.
However, senior Pentagon officials told the newspaper they were frustrated by cyber-theft from defence contractors, which handle sensitive classified data.
US President Barack Obama is expected to raise concerns over cyber warfare when he meets his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in California next month.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...94R02720130528 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1226652553231