Lockheed investigates hacking attack

Lockheed Martin said Sunday it had stepped up investigations into a sophisticated hacking attack on its computer networks. It also said it had strengthened security measures for gaining remote access to its systems. The defence contractor revealed Saturday that its IT systems came under attack on 21 May and that the problem that had affected a "lot of people."

According to reports, the incident had forced Lockheed to reset passwords for employees and undertake other emergency measures. Lockheed was also said to have notified the Pentagon about the problem.

Lockheed said Saturday that the attack was ''significant and tenacious.'' Company officials also said they blocked the attack shortly after hackers got into a system, and claimed that no customer or company data was compromised.

Ms Sondra Barbour, Lockheed's chief information officer, sent a memo to the company's employees on Sunday, saying that its systems remained secure. She said Lockheed had quickly shut down remote access to its network after the attack began.

Lockheed and RSA Security, which supplies coded access tokens to millions of corporate users and government officials, said they were yet to determine whether the attack relied on any data that hackers had stolen from RSA in March or if it exploited other weakness in the system.

Still, the attack was significant enough to figure in US president Barack Obama's daily briefings. White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said Sunday the damage was ''fairly minimal.''