Following news on Monday that hacker collective Anonymous had breached systems at defense technology contractor giant Booz Allen Hamilton, the company late Tuesday issued a statement, saying its systems were breached as a result of a recent cyber attack. The company didn’t share any significant additional information as to what data may have been exposed, other than saying it believes a learning management system for a government agency was compromised.
After previously stating several times to the media yesterday, “As security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems,” the company said that due to the publicity of the recent event, it decided to comment.
Based on claims from Anonymous and information provided by Booz Allen Hamilton, indications are that the systems breached containing the claimed 90,000 military accounts and hashed passwords could have been from a system the firm had been running for a military learning or training system. It doesn’t appear as though any significant data was compromised or taken as a result of the breach.
The full statement from Booz Allen Hamilton is below.
Booz Allen Hamilton has confirmed today that the posting of certain data files on the Internet yesterday was the result of an illegal attack. We are conducting a full review of the nature and extent of the attack. At this time, we do not believe that the attack extended beyond data pertaining to a learning management system for a government agency.
Our policy and security practice is generally not to comment on such matters; however, given the publicity about this event, we believe it is important to set out our preliminary understanding of the facts. We are communicating with our clients and analyzing the nature of this attack and the data files affected. We maintain our commitment to protect our clients and our firm from illegal thefts of information.