Study Says Hackers Routinely Attack Defense Computers

Computer hackers attempted to break into Defense Department computer systems 250,000 times last year, and might have succeeded 65 percent of the time, according to estimates in a new congressional study.

“These hacker attacks are very serious,” said Jack L. Brock Jr., an official with the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency.

“You have no idea if these are kids out for a joy ride or they are an intense and organized attempt to break in and obtain national-security data,” Brock said.

While officially classified data are protected with secure systems and special codes, the Defense Department has over 2 million computers filled with sensitive data that often can be accessed through the Internet.

“That’s not to say it’s not important. This is the sort of information before the age of computers that you’d keep under lock and key,” said Brock, who testified Wednesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

For the Defense Department, the GAO said, so seldom are attacks caught and losses assessed that officials have little idea of how much their computer systems have been compromised. Data at risk include such things as commercial transactions, payrolls, research, weapon-maintenance records, logistics and communication information and personnel records.

Studies by the GAO and subcommittee staff portrayed a Defense Department system that is sometimes literally open to exploitation by children, as in a 1994 case at the Air Force’s Rome, N.Y., laboratory that sounds like a script from movies like “War Games” or “The Net.”

A 16-year-old kid from the United Kingdom, with the computer nickname “Datastream Cowboy,” used a common desktop computer to break into the Rome Laboratory system, virtually shut it down and, at least temporarily, raise fears of an international incident with North Korea.

“We haven’t really taken a serious look at computer vulnerability yet,” said Lance Hoffman, a professor in charge of George Washington University’s center for computer policy. “We build computers today like they built cars before they had seat belts.”