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Latest Accused Hacker: U.S. Navy

U.K. marine-mammal preservation charity accuses Navy of hacking site for information on Russian military dolphins.

By Kristi Essick, PCWorld   

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society--which operates an online shopping site that generates money for the welfare of the animals--said it was alerted to the attempted break-in last week by its site-hosting company, Merchant Technology.

%dquotWe were working late one night, and a command line request came in wanting to access unauthorized areas of the site,%dquot said Andy Fisher, marketing manager for Merchant. %dquotWe were amazed to find out it was the Pentagon.%dquot

Merchant built and manages the secure site for the conservation society and routinely keeps an eye on visitors. If users attempt to gain access to unauthorized areas, the company is alerted to the source of the incoming request.

At 9:45 p.m. GMT on April 28, Fisher said, workers at Merchant were shocked to see an incoming attempt to breach security by a user identified as donhqns1.hq.navy.mil.

Merchant got in touch with WDCS immediately and was informed that the Navy had contacted the charity a few weeks earlier. The Navy was interested in obtaining a report the group is working on that details the efforts of Russian animal experts to train dolphins in the Black Sea for military tasks, such as finding and attaching probes to submarines, Fisher said.

A WDCS spokesperson said that there is nothing secret about the Russian government%squots activities in this area, but that the document does contain information about the export of the trained dolphins to foreign countries. The group declined to give the Navy a copy of the report only because it was not complete at the time, she said. Once it is made final, the report will be published and the Navy can then examine it, she said.

The WDCS said that it is confused about why the Navy would attempt to break into its Web site.

%dquotI would think whoever it was within the U.S. Navy would have better things to do rather than try and hack into our computers,%dquot Chris Stroud, the organization%squots director of campaigns, said in the statement. %dquotIf they were seeking reports on the Black Sea, we shall be freely publishing these in the near future anyway.%dquot

The WDCS previously has commented unfavorably on Navy activities, such as its low-frequency sonar trials off Hawaii and on ship collisions with endangered whales, the group said.

Merchant says it is %dquot100-percent sure%dquot the hacking attempt originated from the Navy. WDCS has notified the U.S. Embassy in London and the relevant U.K. authorities, the organization said.

%dquotWe hope that the U.S. authorities have some rational explanation for this incident,%dquot Stroud said.

%dquotThe Navy has not yet received a formal complaint on the issue,%dquot said a Navy official, who declined to be named. %dquotUntil the Navy receives a formal complaint with details, there%squots not much we can do to proceed further.%dquot