Lockheed Martin wards off cyber attack

WASHINGTON: Top U.S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin said late on Saturday that it had successfully warded off “a significant and tenacious” attack on its information systems network.

The company's information security team detected the attack almost immediately and took “aggressive actions” to protect all systems and data, said a company statement.

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

The incident is under investigation, and Lockheed Martin said it was keeping appropriate U.S. government agencies informed of the situation. It did not mention any suspected source of the cyber-attack.

U.S. government officials, for their part, told U.S. media that the consequences of the attack for the Pentagon and other agencies was “minimal”, and no adverse effect on their operations was expected.

Headquartered in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, Lockheed Martin employs about 126,000 people around the world. It focuses on design, development and manufacturing of advanced technology systems, including some of the most advanced weaponry.

It is one of the world's largest defence contractors, with about 74 per cent of its revenues in 2009 coming from military sales, according to published reports.

Lockheed Martin's products included the Trident missile, P-3 Orion spy plane, F-16 and F-22 Raptor fighter jets and C-130 Hercules military cargo planes among many other major weapons systems. The company is a primary developer of stealth technology used in U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, the F-117 fighter jet as well as the F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter designs.

The corporation's 2010 sales from continuing operations reached $45.8 billion.

However, the stealth Joint Strike Fighter programme has faced delays and cost overruns, and the Pentagon overhauled the programme last year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. space agency NASA announced last week that a new spacecraft to ferry humans into deep space would be based on designs for the Orion crew exploration vehicle and built by Lockheed Martin.

The Orion capsule, originally designed to take astronauts back to the moon, is a surviving component of the Constellation manned space exploration program cancelled by President Barack Obama last year for being behind schedule and over budget.

The capsule will weigh 23 tonnes and NASA has no date set for a potential launch, said Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's exploration systems mission directorate.

There is also no final cost associated with the project.

Lockheed Martin is to continue its work on building the space capsule begun in 2006. — AFP