The 2008 cyberattack on the United States was the "worst breach of U.S. military computers in history". The defense against the attack was named "Operation Buckshot Yankee". It led to the creation of the United States Cyber Command.
Video 2008 cyberattack on United States
History
It started when a USB flash drive infected by a foreign intelligence agency was left in the parking lot of a Department of Defense facility at a base in the Middle East. It contained malicious code and was put into a USB port from a laptop computer that was attached to United States Central Command. From there it spread undetected to other systems, both classified and unclassified.
The Pentagon spent nearly 14 months cleaning the worm, named agent.btz, from military networks. Agent.btz, a variant of the SillyFDC worm, has the ability "to scan computers for data, open backdoors, and send through those backdoors to a remote command and control server." It was suspected that Russian hackers were behind it because they had used the same code that made up agent.btz before in previous attacks. In order to try and stop the spread of the worm, the Pentagon banned USB drives, and disabled Windows autorun feature.
Maps 2008 cyberattack on United States
References
Further reading
- Nakashima, Ellen; Julie Tate (8 Dec 2011), "Cyber-intruder sparks massive federal response -- and debate over dealing with threats", The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, retrieved 9 Dec 2011,
This article, which contains previously undisclosed information on the extent of the infection, the nature of the response and the fractious policy debate it inspired, is based on interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the operation.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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