Attack against Lockheed Martin result of previous RSA breach?

Lockheed Martin, one of United States’ largest military contractors, has experienced an attack against its computer networks, and speculations abound on whether the assault is tied to the March RSA breach, when data regarding the company’s SecurID authentication tokens is thought to have been compromised by the attackers.

Lockheed Martin has confirmed on Saturday that it has detected the “significant and tenacious attack on its information systems network” almost immediately, which allowed it to block the intrusion and keep its data safe.

“Our systems remain secure,” the company said. “No customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised.”

According to the The New York Times, once the attack was detected by the company’s information security team, remote access to the networks has been mostly blocked, and the team started issuing new passwords and tokens to company employees.

Lockheed has contacted US government agencies and is currently investigating the incident. An anonymous company executive has supposedly said that at present, a connection between this attack and the RSA breach cannot be ruled out, but the company has not officially commented on the speculations.

Sondra Barbour, Lockheed’s CIO, said that the company has upgraded the SecurID tokens and that they now issue eight-digit codes instead of four-digit ones.