Jun 1, 2011 17:19 GMT  ·  By

L-3 Communications has been attacked using information stolen during the security breach at RSA, making it the second government contractor to be targeted following the incident.

Wired reports that workers from L-3 Communications, the eight largest U.S. government contractor which provides command-and-control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) technology to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, have been informed about the attacks.

"L-3 Communications has been actively targeted with penetration attacks leveraging the compromised information," an L-3’s Stratus Group executive wrote in a memo addressed to 5,000 workers following the breach at RSA Security and obtained by Wired.

Earlier this year unidentified hackers used a zero-day exploit to compromise computers at RSA Security and steal information related to their SecurID product, a hardware authentication token used by hundreds of government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Last week news broke out that attackers used cloned SecurID tokens to break into the network of Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. government contractor.

The company suspended remote access to its network and proceeded to reissue tokens and passwords for all employees. In a public statement, Lockheed claims the attack was swiftly blocked and that no information was stolen.

A L-3 Communications spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the security incidents mentioned in the memo and at this time it's not known if the attacks were successful or not.

RSA was heavily criticized inside the information security industry for not providing details about what happened and what was stolen from its network.

"While at this time we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers, this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack," the company said at the time.

RSA declined to confirm whether the stolen information can be used to clone SecurID tokens like it happened in the Lockheed Martin attack. "That’s not something we had commented on and probably never will," a spokesperson told Wired.