U.S. Government's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Victim Of Sophisticated Cyberattack

BOSTON (Reuters) - The government's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shut down Internet access to the facility after it suffered a cyber attack.

"PNNL is experiencing an Internet outage due to a cyber attack," the laboratory said in a voice mail message at the lab's office of public affairs.

The voice mail of spokesman Greg Koller described it as "a sophisticated" cyber attack.

Officials with the laboratory, which conducts research on behalf of the Department of Energy, could not immediately be reached to elaborate on the recorded messages.

It comes in the wake of a cyber attack that shut down Internet access at the government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in April.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Derek Caney)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

Comments

[Tom95134]

12:54 PM on 07/07/2011

PNNL is essentially a nuclear research lab.

[Bushido08]

06:59 PM on 07/06/2011

Not really sure I understand exactly what "shut down Internet access" means for these types of facilities but back in the day, most very important equipment was completely isolated from attack. I'm guessing this is public domain stuff like their web servers etc., But the headline makes it sound like really cool stuff.

[gravit8]

08:43 AM on 07/07/2011

well, the extreme action that phrase represents would be to physically disconnect their facility from incoming and outgoing transmission channels. Depending on the severity and complexity of the 'hack' the servers and root equipment itself could have been vulnerable, but one should assume as you have the the very important stuff was isolated from the rest of their internal network both physically and artificially.

That said, we all know how even the smartest geeks like to migrate work and important tasks over to that 'other' machine that has a connection, so it's easier for them to hit up facebook while performing that critical super-top-secret research. The network architecture of these facilities is so complex that vital information could easily find a way onto non-secure equipment, and even the secretarial/organizational information that needs to be shared with other facilities could be a target. Certain countries would love to know what our next secret weapons are...

[Bushido08]

11:29 AM on 07/07/2011

gravit8...faned and faved. Thanks for the info...good stuff. Back in the day "we" were working on totally isolating equipment from the outside using fiberoptics that were strung all across the globe. Not sure where that went but I assume it is in place. Good example would be the way the wiki leaks individual had to use other devices to download from his PC. However, I'm even surprised by the stupity of that incident as again, back in the day, that type of capability was removed or disabled from the equipment and people going in and out of those spaces were thoroughly searched.