cryptogon.com

Lockheed, the biggest provider of information technology to the U.S. government, is grappling with “major internal computer network problems,” said one of the sources who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

A second source, who also asked not to be identified, said the issue was “affecting a lot of people” at Lockheed, maker of the stealthy F-22 and F-35 fighter planes and other critical weapons systems.

Lockheed notified the Pentagon about the problem and its response, including resetting passwords for employees, said the defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

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The sources said Lockheed employees were still able to use mobile devices to access their company email accounts.

The slowdown began on Sunday after security experts for the company detected an intrusion to the network, according to technology blogger Robert Cringely. He said it involved the use of SecurID tokens that employees use to access Lockheed’s internal network from outside its firewall,

A spokesman for EMC Corp, whose RSA division makes the tokens, declined to comment on any security issues affecting specific customers.

EMC disclosed in March that hackers had broken into its network and stolen some information related to its SecurIDs. It said the information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of those devices in securing customer networks.

EMC said it worked with the Department of Homeland Security to publish a note on the March attack and provided web addresses to help companies identify where the attack might have come from.

Any attacker would need multiple pieces of information about the token, the customer, the individual users and their pin numbers — some of which are never held by RSA. “In order to mount a successful attack, someone would need to have possession of all this information,” the company said.

Steve Winterfeld, cyber technical lead at TASC, an advanced systems company spun off from Northrop Grumman Corp, said TASC and other companies were extremely concerned about the breach since it meant that the SecurID tokens could no longer be viewed as completely secure.