Hack of Energy’s Pacific Northwest lab exploited zero-day vulnerability

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://gcn.com/articles/2011/07/12/energy-lab-attack-zero-day-exploit.aspx

By William Jackson
GCN.com
July 12, 2011

The cyberattack that took the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory offline on July 1 exploited a zero-day vulnerability 
to infect the systems with an Advanced Persistent Threat, lab CIO Jerry 
Johnson said July 12.

Although external e-mail and some internal communications have been 
restored, the lab’s website at www.pnl.gov remains unavailable and the 
Richland, Wash., lab still has no Internet access. Johnson said he hopes 
that remaining services will be restored by late Wednesday, July 13, or 
early Thursday.

“The landscape we are protecting is very large,” Johnson said. “Given 
the scope and complexity of our network and information systems, we have 
made excellent progress restoring services."

Pacific Northwest was one of two Energy Department labs that became 
aware of an attack on July 1. The Thomas Jefferson Laboratory National 
Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., also went offline for a 
period after the attack was discovered, but restored Internet services 
and began rebuilding its Web site, at www.jlab.org, last week.

[...]

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