By Michael Riley and Ben Elgin
Bloomberg - May 02, 2013
Among defense contractors, QinetiQ North America (QQ/)
is known for spy-world connections and an eye- popping product line.
Its contributions to national security include secret satellites,
drones, and software used by U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Former CIA Director George Tenet was a director of the
company from 2006 to 2008 and former Pentagon spy chief Stephen Cambone
headed a major division. Its U.K. parent was created as a spinoff of a
government weapons laboratory that inspired Q’s lab in Ian Fleming’s
James Bond thrillers, a connection QinetiQ (pronounced kin-EH-tic) still
touts.
QinetiQ’s espionage expertise didn’t keep Chinese cyber- spies from outwitting the company. In a three-year operation, hackers linked to China’s
military infiltrated QinetiQ’s computers and compromised most if not
all of the company’s research. At one point, they logged into the
company’s network by taking advantage of a security flaw identified
months earlier and never fixed.
“We found traces of the intruders in many of their divisions
and across most of their product lines,” said Christopher Day, until
February a senior vice president for Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)’s
Terremark security division, which was hired twice by QinetiQ to
investigate the break-ins. “There was virtually no place we looked where
we didn’t find them.”
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