Byzantine Foothold is the unclassified code name related to a
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...
effort within the larger Cyber Initiative framework, specifically aimed at curbing and preventing foreign intrusions into the computer networks of US federal agencies. It has been said that this threat is related to ongoing efforts by Chinese hackers of the
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four Military branch, services—People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force, People's ...
, but no public documentation is available which would prove that was the case.
[Bodmer, Kilger, Carpenter, & Jones (2012). Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation. New York: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. , ]
The twenty largest American military-industrial contractors have also been invited to participate in the program, after a highly potent hacker attack was detected at the
Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation.
Although the US Government sees this as the largest cyber espionage effort against them, no arrests have been made and no specific cyber intruder has been identified. No public information is available as to the state of any on-going investigation related to this intrusion.
See also
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Moonlight Maze
Moonlight Maze was a data breach of classified U.S. government information lasting from 1996 to 1998. It represents one of the first widely known cyber espionage campaigns in world history. It was even classified as an Advanced Persistent Threat ...
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Titan Rain
Titan Rain was a series of coordinated attacks on computer systems in the United States since 2003; they were known to have been ongoing for at least three years. The attacks originated in Guangdong, China. The activity is believed to be associat ...
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Stakkato
Philip Gabriel Pettersson, known by the alias Stakkato, is a Swedish hacker and the alleged perpetrator of a worldwide cyber attack known to have occurred from at least December 2003 until May 2005, targeting many sites on the Internet including ...
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Stuxnet
Stuxnet is a Malware, malicious computer worm first uncovered on June 17, 2010, and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsibl ...
References
Non-combat military operations involving the United States
Computer network security
United States Cyber Command
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