Army Network Hacked By Gamers Seeking Apache Helicopter Simulator

Hackers who were after gaming secrets wiggled their way into an Army network in the process, the AP reports.

Federal officials have accused a group of twenty-something-year-old players calling itself Xbox Underground of accessing an Army computer system for two months in late 2012. They entered via a hack at Zombie Studios, a game developer that was working with the military service on flight simulation software to train Apache helicopter pilots.

As soon as the Army was notified, military officials “addressed the particular manner in which they were branched," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed McAndrew, when asked about the military's response to the hacking.

During a three-year raid on the gaming industry, the group siphoned off more than $100 million in proprietary data related to the Xbox One gaming console and Xbox Live online gaming system and popular video games such as "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" and "Gears of War 3."

FBI officials were alerted to the hacking operation in January 2011 by a confidential informant.

So far, four men in the group have been charged with infiltrating the computer networks of Microsoft Corporation, Epic Games Inc., Valve Corporation, Zombie Studios and the U.S. Army.

Read the rest at ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches.

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