Russian hackers conducted a malware strike on combat zone computers and the US Central Command overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan, according the US Defence Department.

Senior military leaders told President Bush this week that a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defence Department computers that may have originated in Russia.

They said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that oversees US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected computers in combat zones. One highly protected classified network was also bought down.

A Defense Department source said that the attack was significant and got everyone's attention. It is not clear if the malware was created by an individual hacker or whether the Russian government may have had some involvement.

The software's designers may have been targeting computers used by troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The malware is called agent.btz, and has been circulating among nongovernmental U.S. computers for months. Recently it affected the Pentagon's networks. It spreads to any flash drive plugged into an infected computer.  Such drives are used constantly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many officers keep flash drives loaded with the data around their necks. X

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