The Democratic National Committee’s problems with alleged Russian intelligence agency hackers ain’t nothing.
Military website Defense One reports that the Pentagon thwarts 36 million emails full of malware, viruses and phishing schemes on a daily basis. The dubious emails are being sent by hackers, terrorists and foreign foes attempting to gain access to US military systems.
David Bennett, the director of operations for the Defense Information Systems Agency, told a conference in Arlington, Virginia this week that the Pentagon receives 13 billion such emails extrapolated over the period of one year. The emails are automatically scanned for suspicious content and other telltale signatures and “dumped on the floor” before they ever reach an inbox, according to Bennett.
“The reality is we’ve got to get it right all the time, they only have to get it right once,” Bennett added. “Emails are the number one [threat vector] delivery mechanism globally.”
The US Defense Department has been a target of hackers, spammers and hostile nation states for years. In 2015, Defense One said only one in seven emails sent to its 3.2 million total users was said to be legitimate. The rest were said to have malware, viruses or were classified as spam.