A US military contractor was allegedly hacked by those associated with the Chinese military. The company reportedly ignored signs of security breaches, allowing hackers to access military technology and classified documents for three years. QinetiQ North America was attacked by a Shanghai-based hacker group from 2007 to 2010, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The hacking collective has been coined the “Comment Crew” by security experts. The company is known for its contributions to national security – including software used by US forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Comment Crew’s continuous spying reportedly provided China with a wealth of secret information on QinetiQ’s drones, satellites, military robotics, and the US Army’s combat helicopter fleet. The spies also stole several terabytes – equivalent to hundreds of millions of pages – of documents and data on weapons programs. China’s military may have also stolen programming code and design details that it could use to disable some of the most sophisticated US weaponry. The situation could have a crippling effect on America’s defense capabilities. “God forbid we get into a conflict with China but if we did we could face a major embarrassment, where we try out all these sophisticated weapons systems and they […]
US military secrets leaked to Chinese hackers for three years