This past June, according to Arstechnica the US’ Department of Defense (DoD) was compromised:

According to Gates, portions of the Pentagon e-mail system were disabled in response to hacking activity. “Elements of the OSD unclassified e-mail system were taken offline yesterday afternoon, due to a detected penetration,” said Gates, according to a transcript of the event published by the Defense Department. “We obviously have redundant systems in place, and there is no anticipated adverse impact on ongoing operations. There will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.”

A “detected penetration” most likely means that an email server was compromised and some form of malware was installed on it.

Today’s Financial Times ratchets the story up another notch with inside information from “American officials” that:

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.

Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

For anyone keeping track of coincidences, President Bush will be meeting President Hu Jintao in Australia this week during the APEC summit. As with Chancellor Merkel’s meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao (see my post earlier here), it seems to be getting pretty tough to meet senior Chinese leaders without a concomitant surge in cyberespionage stories.

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