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The recent hack on a U.S. Navy contractor’s servers is being labeled as “very serious” by Rhode Island’s U.S. Senator Jack Reed. Investigators are blaming the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The Chinese hackers were able to download 614GBs of data related to U.S. undersea warfare systems, including the Sea Dragon supersonic anti-ship missile program. The data stolen “could give U.S. adversaries like China and Russia an edge in developing similar capabilities,” Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told USNI News.
The defense official told USNI News that the there were particular concerns over the type of data that was stolen from the contractor, which supported the Naval Undersea Warfare Center based in Newport, R.I. The official indicated data from other military services may have also been taken from the contractor’s servers. Indications from the multiple breaches that occurred in January and February showed that the servers on which the technical data was stored were not properly protected, the official said.
Of particular concern is information related to the Sea Dragon anti-ship missile program, a project of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office that was being developed by submarine builder General Dynamics Electric Boat. The Pentagon and Navy did not tell USNI News which company affiliated with the Sea Dragon program had its servers hacked.
Like the SCO-led anti-surface modification to the Standard Missile-6, the program sought to give an unspecified sub-launched weapon an anti-ship capability.
While the technical data on its own may be unclassified, enough of it combined together could give U.S. adversaries like China or Russia an edge in developing similar capabilities, Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former aide to retired former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News on Friday.
Source: USNI News
Steve Schneider
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