Russian hackers go spear fishing
The unclassified email system belonging to the Pentagon's Joint Staff has been offline for the past two weeks. Officials shut it down after discovering a "sophisticated cyber intrusion" that occurred on or near July 25, according to NBC News, which was first to report the incident. No classified information was stolen, though the unclassified accounts and emails belonging to around 4,000 military and civilian personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff were compromised.
This time around officials are pointing the finger at Russia, not China or North Korea, both of which have been blamed for other high profile cyberattacks occurring in the past year. Due to the sophistication of the cyber intrusion, U.S. officials believe it was "clearly the work of a state actor," though they're unsure if it was sanctioned by the Russian government or if individuals carried it out.
The attack used an automated system that was able to quickly gather large amounts of data -- it then only took a minute for that information to be distributed to thousands of Internet accounts. Hackers also used encrypted accounts on social media to coordinate the cyber assault.
Though the incident is being described as "sophisticated," The Daily Beast reports that hackers broke into unclassified email networks by way of spear phishing -- sending legitimate looking emails that ended up being laced with malware.
CNBC News says the email system will up and running again sometime today.
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