Thousands of files, related to the newest Joint Strike Fighter Plane F-35 Lightning II, were stolen by hackers from computers of Pentagon contractors.

In today’s world everyone must guard their personal information including contractors for the Pentagon who are in charge of design on the U.S. military’s newest and most technologically advanced fighter aircraft, the F-35 Lightning II.

Hackers seek out to find vulnerable systems that they can gain access too. In this case of hackers stealing data from the systems used by contractors of the Pentagon, it could be the situation where the operators may have not proven that they were using the proper level of computer security. Companies that contract with the Department of Defense now have to prove that they are implementing certain security measures even before they are authorized to work on a project. This policy was put into place last year because of the increase of cyber intrusions.

The U.S. government has not, and probably will not, go into detail about the recent breach. Many officials have assured those who speculate certain scenarios of this data breach that no classified information was compromised. In addition, the files compromised only focused on the design, performance statistics of the aircraft and a system used to conduct self-diagnostics during flight, which pretty much limits the possibility of sensitive data being stolen.

The U.S. military’s newest fighter aircraft is designed to become the aircraft used by all branches of service. Several international partners are assisting in the build of the new aircraft. It will be sold to U.S. allied countries which could raise the concern of security levels and practices of other countries involved.

As of now, offices have said that a number of safeguards have been implemented to protect the system that was hacked into. Hackers will not stop at anything until they are caught and put in jail. Do you think the U.S. Department of Defense has additional work to do in order to safeguard sensitive information? Is the DOD too lax when it comes to protecting systems of new programs such as the one of the newest fighter jet, the F-35 Lightning II?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 8:55 am and is filed under Cybersecurity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.