Pentagon Faces Massive Cyber Threats

23 September 2010

Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, commander of the US Cyber Command, center, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington to testify before the House Armed Services Committee hearing on cyberspace operations, 23 Sep 10

Within the U.S. Department of Defense, there are some 15,000 different computer networks, including 7 million computing devices on hundreds of military installations around the world.

General Alexander told members of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee that those computer systems are at risk.

"We face severe threats. Those threats to our national security in my opinion are real. It is occupying much of our time and attention. At the unclassified level, we have stated that we see probes and scans to our networks that come up on the order of 250,000 times an hour," said Alexander.

Recently, the Defense Department revealed new details about a major cyber attack in 2008 that allowed hackers to transfer data to servers under foreign control. Defense officials say that intrusion served as a wakeup call. The following year, Cyber Command was created to defend the Pentagon's computer networks.

General Alexander, who also serves as the director of the National Security Agency, said that since the inception of the Internet, the key problems have been activity by hackers, and exploitation of private and sensitive information.