https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/29/a-decade-after-russia-hacked-the-pentagon-trump-unshackles-cyber-command-961103
By Martin Matishak
Politico
11/29/2018
It began with an infected USB flash drive.
In the fall of 2008, a U.S. service member stationed at a DoD facility in
Afghanistan inserted the thumb drive, which Pentagon officials believe
Russian spies infected with malicious code, into a laptop. Without even
knowing it, the simple, ordinary action let Moscow infiltrate SIPRNet, the
Pentagon's secret internal network, in one of the most devastating
military security compromises in U.S. history.
It would take the Pentagon roughly 14 months to scrub the worm, dubbed
agent.btz, from its systems in an operation the military called "Buckshot
Yankee."
A decade ago, the U.S. military was just beginning to confront the risk of
digital espionage and cyber warfare. But the malware infection
crystallized for DoD leaders that battling these threats required a
fundamental change to how the military maneuvered in the digital domain --
a U.S. Cyber Command.
In November 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a crucial change in
Pentagon structure that would set the stage for the digital warfare unit.
He put network defense under the control of NSA Director Keith Alexander
with the intent of eventually setting up a four-star command that would
bring it all together. Until then, the NSA helped coordinate offensive and
intelligence gathering operations, while digital defenses were left to
subordinate unit within U.S. Strategic Command.
[...]
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