The Biggest Military Hacks of All Time

The biggest military hack of all time, the Pentagon hacker, the NASA hacker - hold your breath, it's another media hype or traffic acquisition headline strategy by the majority of online media sites. Who else are we missing? The NASA port scanner, the true walking case study on tweaking NMAP for subconscious espionage purposes, the CIA IRC junkies that managed to talk them into talking with "them", and Bozo the clown chased by the Thought Police for his intentions.

Great examples of buzz generating, deadline-centered news articles you can always amuse yourself with, and feel sorry for the lack of insightful perspectives nowadays -- I'm slowly compiling a list of best of the best news items ever, so let there be less intergalactic security statements, and less flooding web sites with Hezbollah data stories.

In case you've somehow missed Gary McKinnon's story, don't you worry as you haven't missed anything spectacular, besides today's flood of reporters with claimed prehistoric IT security experience -- you must make the different between a reporter, a journalist, and a barking dog thought. Perhaps the only objective action done by an industry representative was the Sophos survey on Gary McKinnon. It would be much more credible to differentiate the severity of the hack, depending on which military or government network was actually breached, don't just go where the wind blows, barely reporting, where's YOUR opinion if ANY?

Was it the NSANet, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System [JWICS], the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), or the Unclassified but Sensitive Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) actually breached?

Moreover, were the following real-life examples a paintball game or something :

- Solar SunRise
"SOLAR SUNRISE was a series of DoD computer network attacks which occurred from 1-26 February 1998. The attack pattern was indicative of a preparation for a follow-on attack on the DII. DoD unclassified networked computers were attacked using a well-known operating system vulnerability. The attackers followed the same attack profile: (a) probing to determine if the vulnerability exists, (b) exploiting the vulnerability, (c) implanting a program (sniffer) to gather data, and (d) returning later to retrieve the collected data."

- Dutch hackers during the Gulf War
"At least one penetrated system directly supported U.S. military operations in Operation Desert Storm prior to the Gulf War. They copied or altered unclassified data and changed software to permit future access. The hackers were also looking for information about nuclear weapons. Their activities were first disclosed by Dutch television when camera crews filmed a hacker tapping into what was said to be U.S. military test information."

- The Case Study: Rome Laboratory, Griffiss Air Force Base
"However, events really began in 1994, when the two young men broke into an Air Force installation known as Rome Labs, a facility at the now closed Griffiss Air Force Base, in New York. This break-in became the centerpiece of a Government Accounting Office report on network intrusions at the Department of Defense in 1996 and also constituted the meat of a report entitled "Security and Cyberspace" by Dan Gelber and Jim Christy, presented to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during hearings on hacker break-ins the same year. It is interesting to note that Christy, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations staffer/author of this report, was never at Rome while the break-ins were being monitored."

- Moonlight Maze
"It was claimed that these hackers had obtained large stores of data that might include classified naval codes and information on missile guidance systems, though it was not certain that any such information had in fact been compromised."

- Titan Rain
"Titan Rain hackers have gained access to many U.S. computer networks, including those at Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA."

- Chinese hackers who supposedly downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes from the NIPRNet -- it's like I love you from 1 to 50, and you?

From another perspective, the biggest military hack doesn't have to come from the outside, but from the inside, as soldiers are easily losing their USB sticks on the field. Breaching the SIPRnet from the ouside would be a good example of a big military hack, but then again, insiders are always there to "take care".

If Gary McKinnon did the biggest military hack of all time, why do I still hear Bozo singing - ta ta tararata ta ta rara tata.

UPDATE:
Related posts you might also find informative - North Korea's Cyber Warfare Unit 121, Techno imperialism and the effect of Cyber terrorism, Cyber War Strategies and Tactics, the rest you can Google. Surprised to come across the post at Meneame.net too.