Hackers infiltrate Pentagon computers more than 160,000 times ayear, threatening "catastrophic damage," but the military rarelydetects and seldom investigates the interlopers, governmentinvestigators said Wednesday.
"At a minimum, these attacks are a multimillion-dollar nuisanceto Defense. At worst, they are a serious threat to nationalsecurity," the General Accounting Office said.
Citing Pentagon estimates, a GAO report said as many as 250,000attempts might have been made to penetrate military computernetworks last year, and 65 percent -- 162,500 -- were successful.
But only about one in 150 was detected and reported, the GAOsaid, and "the potential for catastrophic damage is great."
The report, presented to the Senate Governmental Affairssubcommittee on investigations, dealt with the more than 90 percentof Pentagon data that is unclassified. It nevertheless couldcontain highly sensitive information on troop movements,procurement and maintenance of weapons systems.
Beyond young hackers who may have no criminal intent, about 120countries already have or are developing computer attackcapabilities.
"In some extreme scenarios, studies show that terrorists orother adversaries could seize control of Defense informationsystems and seriously degrade the nation's ability to deploy andsustain military forces," said the GAO, Congress' investigative arm.
The report quoted the Pentagon as accepting that the documentfairly represented the increasing threat of Internet attacks.Officers attributed some of the problems to poorly designed systemsor to the use of off-the-shelf computer products without inherentsecurity safeguards.
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen stressed that the reportfocused only on unclassified transmissions between the departmentand the outside world.
Information on weapons systems and other classified materialwas secure, she said.
Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, the committee's ranking Democrat,said cyberspace crime poses a new challenge to the government.
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