The Defense Department confirmed Friday that a virus has infected some of its computer networks but declined to identify the infection, say whether it was a direct attack on the networks or confirm published directives that ban the use of portable storage media such as thumb drives.

“We are aware of a global virus for which there are some public alerts,” said Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman. “And we’ve seen some of this on our networks. We’re taking steps to identify and mitigate the virus.”

Whitman wouldn’t characterize the infection further except to call it a “global issue” that also is affecting worldwide networks outside the Defense Department.

He also declined to confirm a ban on the use of thumb drives, although the ban was spelled out in at least two recent Air Force directives, one of which says the order comes from the Defense Department command that oversees the military computer domains shared by all the services.

Whitman also would not comment on whether officials think the infection may have been transmitted to the military’s networks by way of a thumb drive or other flash media.

“We don’t discuss specific defensive measures that we’re taking or may be taking to protect and defend our networks,” Whitman said.

He called cyberspace a “warfighting domain that’s critical to our operations. And we have to protect it.”

He said military computer network intruders range from recreational hackers to “cyber vigilantes,” ideologically motivated attackers and “transnational actors and national states” that probe the department’s networks “millions” of times daily.

Neither Air Force directive details why the ban on portable digital media was imposed throughout the Defense Department’s Global Information Grid, which includes more than 17,000 local- and regional-area networks and approximately 7 million individual computers.

But the thumb drive ban outlined in the directives was clearly in reaction to a network intrusion, one computer security expert said.

“If it’s preventive, why wasn’t it preventive last week?” said Bruce Schneier, renowned security expert and chief security technology officer for BT, a British-based global communications firm. “Something happened, and they’re worried about it propagating.”

“They’ve got something they need to deal with,” Schneier said. “And they can deal with it better if things don’t move in and out of network. The problem with things like USB sticks is that they’re off-line storage.”

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 12:02