Lockheed Martin Shuts Down VPN Following Security Incident

Major defense contractor Lockheed Martin has suspended remote access to its corporate network in the wake of a serious security incident.

The creator of the F-22, F-35 fighter planes and many weapon systems, is the Pentagon's and the US government's biggest supplier of information technology.

It's not clear what eactly caused the extraordinary measures, but a confidential source told Reuters that the company is dealing with "major internal computer network problems."

All employees who normally work remotely have been ordered into the closest office, because the company's VPN will be down for at least a week.

There are suspicions that this attack is related to the compromise at EMC's RSA Data Security division earlier this year.

RSA develops a two-factor authentication system called SecurID which is used by thousands of companies around the world, including Lockheed Martin.

When hackers broke into the RSA's network earlier this year via a zero-day exploit, the company said that data related to its SecurID product has been compromised.

It certainly seems that Lockheed Martin's problems involve RSA's product because the company informed its employees that they will be issued with new SecurID tokens. They will also be forced to change their password.

The information on Lockheed's network is extremely valuable, especially to foreign powers. Because of this, the possibility of a state-sponsored attack is pretty high.

The attack against RSA also exhibited a high level of sophistication, so it might very well be the same perpetrators. Lockheed Martin employs over 100,000 people so the process of issuing new tokens and passwords might take a while.

There are also concerns that other companies dealing with sensitive information might have been compromised in a similar way and don't know it yet or haven't made the attacks public.