It is reported that over a couple of dozen of designs for advanced weapon systems of U.S. have been accessed by Chinese hackers. The designs of weapon systems compromised include combat ships and aircrafts as well as missile defenses.

The designs of these weapon systems were included is a report’s section that was not disclosed previously. The report was created for Pentagon officials, defense industry and government. DSB or Defense Science Board, which is an experts’ committee responsible for advising scientific and technical matters to the Department of Defense, created this report, says the Washington Post.

The DSB said, in the report’s public version, that this breach has led to enormous losses related to design information on weapon systems which included combat knowledge gathered over years for both DoD (Department of Defense) and all its contractors. DSB released the public version in January that covered crucial knowledge gathered over a period of 18-month study about the military systems’ resilience against highly advanced and ever growing cyberthreats.

The hackers managed to get through to the designs of missile defense systems that included PAC-3 Patriot missile, Aegis ballistic missile system of U.S. Navy and THAAD or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. This list was disclosed by Washington Post which received the copy of the report section that was not disclosed previously.

Apart from the missile defense systems, the hackers also managed to get hold of the designs for F-35 multirole combat aircraft, F/A-18 fighter jet, Black Hawk helicopter, V-22 Osprey Aircraft and LCS or Littoral Combat Ship of U.S. Navy.

The data and time of this cyber breach was not disclosed by the DSB but Washington Post reported that some senior unnamed officials of defense industry and military were familiar to the breach pattern and that the officials call it to be an act of Chinese cyberespionage.

In past few years, United States has been very vocal and has claimed that China is behind all cyber-attacks resulting in sensitive information and intellectual property theft. DoD released a report in April, 2013 where it claimed that many computer systems all over the world have been breached and many of them were U.S. government property and that some of these cyber-attacks are attributable to Chinese military and government directly. China has however denied all allegations by calling them baseless.

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