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Updated Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:57 pm TWN, By Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters



	In this April 9, 2009, file photo, a sign outside the Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, Georgia is shown. Lockheed Martin on Saturday admitted it was the recent target of a “significant and tenacious” cyber-attack, although the defense contractor and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security insist the hack was thwarted before any critical data were stolen. AP Enlarge Photo

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Lockheed Martin's 'cybercops' sift through hacker evidence

WASHINGTON -- Last week's attack on Lockheed Martin Corp.'s computer networks has galvanized dozens of cyber “detectives” at the company's cavernous security intelligence center outside Washington.

The U.S. government and Lockheed, the world's biggest military contractor and the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier, have said the unknown hackers did not seize any sensitive information in the May 21 attack, but government and industry experts are still working feverishly to isolate the origins of the attack.

Lockheed, which is also the U.S. government's biggest information technology provider, opened the 25,000-square-foot, US$17 million center in 2008. It opened a sister site in Denver last year to help deal with the growing workload and take over if the main center is knocked off line.

Dozens of highly trained analysts work at the center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where green plants and a Feng Shui-styled decor beckon visitors to a public collaboration space that looks like a high-tech university campus.

The real work, though, goes on in a large, dimly lit internal security center only open to critical personnel. Flickering wall-sized flat screens continuously update activity on Lockheed's mammoth worldwide computer network while monitoring data transmissions by 126,000 employees and outsiders trying to get access to the system.

A U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April Cunningham, said on Saturday that the Pentagon was working with Lockheed to gauge the scope of the attack.

Some top defense officials were on site last week to assess the wider impact, a defense official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters on Thursday.

Just two weeks ago, Lockheed advertised for a “lead computer forensic examiner” for the center, saying it needed someone who could work in a fast paced environment, understood “attack signatures, tactics, techniques and procedures associated with advanced threats,” and was able to “reverse engineer attacker encoding protocols.”

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