WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon’s advanced research arm, the same group credited with developing the forerunner of the Internet in the 1960s, is working on many fronts to boost U.S. defenses against computer-generated attacks.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace — a replica of the Internet on which scientists can test how successfully they can thwart feared foreign- or domestic-launched attempts to disrupt U.S. information networks

Called the National Cyber Range, it will also help the U.S. government train cyberwarriors and hone advanced technologies to guard information systems.

Reuters has learned that the National Cyber Range is expected to be fully up and running by mid-2012, four years after the Pentagon approached contractors to build it. It cost an estimated $130 million.

One of these companies is Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales and itself the target of what it called “a significant and tenacious” cyber attack last month.

Lockheed, the U.S. government’s top information technology provider, was awarded a $30.8 million contract in January 2010 to continue to develop a prototype. Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory won a similar deal at that time.

This summer DARPA is to select one of them to operate a prototype test range during a yearlong test.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate Armed Services Committee urged China to let investigators travel unfettered to the Chinese mainland to probe reports that Chinese-made counterfeit parts are making their way into U.S. weapons and other electronics.

So far, China has declined to grant visas to the committee’s staff investigators. They are now in Hong Kong and seeking to conduct unsupervised interviews in nearby Shenzhen, the suspected epicenter for substandard knock-off parts, Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, and John McCain, the panel’s top Republican, told a news conference.

A range of U.S. companies interviewed by the committee, from military contractors to consumer electronics makers, have pointed “almost totally and exclusively” to China, and more specifically to Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, as a source of counterfeit electronic parts, Levin said.

He said he and McCain, the Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential elections, had sought for more than two months to persuade the Chinese authorities to allow one or two days of interviews on the ground as part of an official Senate investigation.

Levin said Beijing had asked that the investigators delay their proposed trip or, if eventually granted visas, agree to be accompanied by a China official during interviews.

“That is a non-starter,” Levin said. “(We) cannot have somebody looking at our staff while they are interviewing people who are relevant to the investigation.”

McCain told the press conference that it should be in China’s interests, too, to eliminate counterfeit electronic parts ‘lest they harm Chinese companies along with others.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate Armed Services Committee urged China to allow investigators to travel to the Chinese mainland to probe reports that Chinese-made counterfeit parts are making their way into U.S. weapons systems and other electronics.

So far, China has declined to grant visas to committee staff investigators. They are now in Hong Kong and seeking to conduct unfettered interviews in nearby Shenzhen, home to many of China’s high-tech companies, Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, and John McCain, the panel’s top Republican, told a news conference.

A range of U.S. companies interviewed by the committee, from military contractors to consumer electronics makers, have pointed “almost totally and exclusively” to China, and more specifically to Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, as a source of counterfeit electronic parts, Levin said.

He said he and McCain, the Republican nominee for president in 2008, had tried for more than two months to persuade Chinese authorities to allow one or two days of interviews on the ground as part of an official Senate investigation.

Levin said Beijing had requested that the investigators delay their proposed trip or, if eventually granted visas, agree to be accompanied by a China official during interviews.

“That is a non-starter,” he said. “Cannot have somebody looking at our staff while they are interviewing people who are relevant to the investigation.”

A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A national government is the most likely culprit in an apparent cyber attack on the International Monetary Fund, say experts, given the complexity of the assault and its targeting of the organization’s secrets.

With the IMF leadership up for grabs as it mulls Eurozone bailouts and global financial reform, there are no shortage of states who might like to read its mail.

Any confirmation of a country’s involvement would become a major diplomatic incident.

“For what we can tell, the aim … appears to be to gather intelligence rather than cause disruption,” said John Bassett, a former senior official at Britain’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

“The intrusion appears to be sophisticated and well executed at an operational level (suggesting) that it originates from or is sponsored by a state.”

For many, China topped the list of suspects. Chinese hackers have been suspected of being behind several recent data theft attempts including one aimed at breaching the security of Google’s Gmail on accounts belonging to activists, US officials and others. Beijing angrily denies any government link.

But experts say almost every sophisticated state indulges in electronic snooping, whilst independent hackers potentially working for militant groups or even banks or investment funds could also be in the frame.

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A national government is the most likely culprit in an apparent cyber attack on the International Monetary Fund, say experts, given the complexity of the assault and its targeting of the organisation’s secrets.

With the IMF leadership up for grabs as it mulls Eurozone bailouts and global financial reform, there are no shortage of states who might like to read its mail.

Any confirmation of a country’s involvement would become a major diplomatic incident.

“For what we can tell, the aim … appears to be to gather intelligence rather than cause disruption,” said John Bassett, a former senior official at Britain’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

“The intrusion appears to be sophisticated and well executed at an operational level (suggesting) that it originates from or is sponsored by a state.”

For many, China topped the list of suspects. Chinese hackers have been suspected of being behind several recent data theft attempts including one aimed at breaching the security of Google’s Gmail on accounts belonging to activists, US officials and others. Beijing angrily denies any government link.

But experts say almost every sophisticated state indulges in electronic snooping, whilst independent hackers potentially working for militant groups or even banks or investment funds could also be in the frame.

WASHINGTON/LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) – A major cyber attack on the IMF aimed to steal sensitive insider information, a cyber security expert said on Sunday, as the race to lead the body which oversees global financial system heated up.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping to investigate the attack on the International Monetary Fund, the latest in a rash of cyber break-ins that have targeted high-profile companies and institutions.

“The IMF attack was clearly designed to infiltrate the IMF with the intention of gaining sensitive ‘insider privileged information’,” cyber security specialist Mohan Koo, who is also Managing Director, Dtex Systems (UK), told Reuters in London.

A June 8 internal memo from Chief Information Officer Jonathan Palmer told staff the Fund had detected suspicious file transfers and that an investigation had shown a desktop computer “had been compromised and used to access some Fund systems”.

“At this point, we have no reason to believe that any personal information was sought for fraud purposes,” it said.

The New York Times cited computer experts as saying the IMF’s board of directors was told of the attack on Wednesday, though the assault had lasted several months.

The IMF says its remains “fully functional” but has declined to comment on the extent of the attack or the nature of the intruders’ goal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund, the intergovernmental group that oversees the global financial system and brings together 187 member nations, has become the latest known target of a significant cyber attack on its computer systems.

A cybersecurity expert who has worked for both the Washington-headquartered IMF and the World Bank, its sister institution, said the intruders’ goal had been to install software that would give a nation state a “digital insider presence” on the IMF network.

Such a presence could yield a trove of non-public economic data used by the Fund to promote exchange rate stability, support balanced international trade and provide resources to remedy members’ balance-of-payments crises.

“It was a targeted attack,” said Tom Kellerman, who has worked for both international financial institutions and who serves on the board of a group known as the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance.

The code used in the IMF incident “was developed and released for this purpose,” said Kellerman, formerly responsible for cyber-intelligence within the World Bank’s treasury team and now chief technology officer at AirPatrol, a cyber consultancy.

The attack on the IMF was the latest to become known in a rash of cyber break-ins that have targeted high-profile companies and institutions, often to steal secrets with potentially far-reaching economic implications.

IMF spokesman David Hawley said Saturday the Fund was “fully functional,” despite the attack.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Pentagon contractors have been bleeding secrets for years as a result of penetrations of their computer networks, current and former national security officials say.

The Defense Department, which runs its own worldwide eavesdropping, spying and code-cracking systems, says more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations have been trying to break into U.S. networks.

Some of the perpetrators “already have the capacity to disrupt” U.S. information infrastructure, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who is leading remedial efforts, wrote last fall in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Joel Brenner, the National Counterintelligence executive from 2006 to 2009, said most if not all of the big defense contractors’ networks had been pierced.

“This has been happening since the late ’90s,” he told Reuters Tuesday. He identified the main threats as coming from Russia, China and Iran.

“They’re after our weapons systems and R&D,” or research and development, said Brenner, now with the law firm of Cooley LLP in Washington.

Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, said on Saturday that it had thwarted “a significant and tenacious” attack on its information systems network that it detected May 21. Ten days later, the company says its still working to restore full employee access to the network while maintaining the highest level of security.

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) – Top Pentagon contractors have been bleeding secrets for years as a result of penetrations of their computer networks, current and former U.S. national security officials say.

The U.S. Defense Department, which runs its own worldwide eavesdropping, spying and code-cracking systems, says more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations have been trying to break into U.S. networks.

Some of the perpetrators “already have the capacity to disrupt” U.S. information infrastructure, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who is leading remedial efforts, wrote last fall in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Joel Brenner, the National Counterintelligence executive from 2006 to 2009, said most if not all of the big defense contractors’ networks had been pierced.

“This has been happening since the late ’90s,” he told Reuters Tuesday. He identified the main threats as coming from Russia, China and Iran.

“They’re after our weapons systems and R&D,” or research and development, said Brenner, now with the law firm of Cooley LLP in Washington.

Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, said on Saturday that it had thwarted “a significant and tenacious” attack on its information systems network that it detected May 21. Ten days later, the company says its still working to restore full employee access to the network while maintaining the highest level of security. [ID:nN29197689]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Past patterns may point to China, but top investigators say they will never know for sure who mounted a “significant” cyberattack against Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 arms supplier.

Lockheed, which is also the government’s top information technology provider, said on Sunday it was a “frequent target of adversaries around the world.”

The company has not disclosed which of its business units was targeted, but people with experience plugging holes after such strikes said that cyberspies likely sought trade secrets or weapons-related data.

The Bethesda, Maryland-based company did not respond to a request to clarify whom it deemed adversaries, and whether it suspected a foreign state in the digital assault it said it had detected “almost immediately” on May 21.

Lockheed said it had countered with stepped-up security measures and that no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised in the “significant and tenacious attack” on its information systems network.

China has generally emerged as a prime suspect when it comes to keyboard-launched espionage against U.S. interests, although the Pentagon says more than 100 foreign intelligence groups have been trying to pierce U.S. networks.

“China’s government, the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese individuals and organizations continue to hack into American computer systems and networks as well as those of foreign entities and governments,” the bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its 2010 annual report to Congress.