Update: Hackers breach supercomputer centers

IDG News Service - In recent weeks, malicious hackers have infiltrated computer systems at universities in the U.S. and worldwide, leading to questions about the security of scientific research data, according to an official at the National Science Foundation.
The systems were located at universities and research facilities that operate high-performance computer centers, including facilities that are part of a project funded by the NSF called TeraGrid, said Sangtae Kim, director of the Division of Shared CyberInfrastructure at the NSF, an independent U.S. government agency.
Supercomputing centers at U.S. universities, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Center for Advanced Computing Research at the California Institute of Technology, are partners in the TeraGrid project.
Systems at TeraGrid partner facilities were hacked, but no systems that make up TeraGrid itself were compromised, Kim said.
The NSF doesn't know who was behind the attacks, but the agency believes the attacks were part of a much larger action that affected high-end systems worldwide, including sites in Europe. Many of the compromised systems are connected to university research centers, Kim said.
Trish Barker, a spokeswoman for the NCSA said Thursday the infiltration of the TeraGrid system has ended, but the attack was reported to unspecified authorities. "No data was compromised, and no systems were controlled by someone from outside," Barker said. The attacks occurred within the last month, she said, but she declined to comment on how they were discovered.
After the incidents were uncovered, some computer systems were taken offline to repair their security vulnerabilities, and users were asked to change their passwords to prevent future problems, she said.
Ashley Wood, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) at the University of California in San Diego, which is also a member of the TeraGrid network, called the infiltration "a basic inconvenience," but stressed that no information was compromised in the incidents. "Our team took immediate action and lessened the impact of the attack and the TeraGrid never went offline."
In a statement posted on its Web site on April 9, the SDSC confirmed that it was one of several universities and other high performance computing research centers across the nation that were targeted in the widespread cyber attack. The intruder gained access to a number of SDSC systems over a four-day period, the statement said.
Because the TeraGrid -- a network of high-performance computers connected together across the nation since August 2001 to create a huge reseach supercomputer -- is used for research among about