The Pentagon’s F-35 joint program office has said a cybersecurity breach of technical aircraft information from an Australia-based supplier in summer 2016 did not compromise sensitive data, Defense News reported Friday.
F-35 JPO spokesman Joe DellaVedova told Defense News the office was aware of the hacking incident that affected non-classified information.
Reuters reported Thursday nearly 30 gigabytes of commercial data on the F-35 and P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft were stolen during the hack.
Australia’s cybersecurity center said in its 2017 Threat Report report it addressed 734 breaches related to “systems of national interest†for the Australian government’s fiscal year ended June 30 and pointed to defense contractors as primary target of cyber attacks.
An unindentified malicious actor exploited a flaw within an information technology helpdesk portal managed by an Australian defense company last year and gained access to data related to certain aircraft platforms including F-35, ZDNet posted Wednesday
Mitchell Clarke, an incident response manager at Australia’s signals directorate, said the hacked information was regulated under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and urged the Australia’s government to establish strict security controls requirements for contractors to prevent similar attacks.
