14 DAY TRIAL // The Pentagon has informed employees of a data breach affecting its food court computer system, which exposed personal and financial information for some of its personnel.
The Washington Examiner has obtained a copy of an internal memo sent out to the Pentagon's staff.
According to the notice, "within the past week, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency has received numerous reports of fraudulent use of credit cards belonging to Pentagon personnel. These individuals had fraudulent charges to their account soon after they had legitimate transactions at the Pentagon."
Since the Pentagon is the world's largest building, it receives catering services from multiple food courts. The notice does not give details about which particular food court system has been hacked, nor about the number of affected employees.
Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Defense Department spokesman, has said that only people who paid for meals in the past using a debit or credit card are affected by the leak. Personnel that used cash have nothing to worry about.
This comes a month after the Pentagon's email system was breached
This is not the first time the Pentagon has been hacked in the past month. NBC News ran a story at the start of August revealing that the Pentagon's public unclassified email system had been hacked.
Authorities linked the attack to Chinese hackers, but some sources also credited a Russian-based operation.
Nevertheless, the recent rise in attacks against the US has forced the country's government to take stronger security measures.
One of the measures the US is currently pondering is to impose economic sanctions on China, or any other country linked to cyber-attacks on its infrastructure.
However, a recent Washington Post article linked the imminent Iran nuclear deal with the decreasing number of cyber-attacks currently originating from the country, so it appears that economic sanctions were never the best solution for preventing cyber-attacks.