Pentagon gave 6% of all IPs to an unknown ‘ghost’ company
WASHINGTON, (BM) – The Washington Post reveals an unusual and frightening practice of the Pentagon. According to investigative media journalists, the Pentagon gave access to 175 million IP addresses of the company Global Resource Systems, founded only in 2020, three minutes before Joe Biden took office.
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These are all IP addresses used by the Pentagon. The transfer took place on January 20th, with the company initially gaining access to 56 million IP addresses, and later that number to 175 million. For reference: 175 million IP addresses represent 6% of all worldwide and Internet IP addresses. The small ghost company Global Resource Systems is already ahead of large conglomerates such as Comcast and AT&T in this respect.
Although the Pentagon and the company declined to comment on the transfer or the order, investigative journalists opened the company’s office in Plantation, Florida. A journalist for The Washington Post went to the Global Resource Systems office but asked to leave.
According to a US Department of Defense statement, Global Resource Systems is a pilot project that should assess the IP address space of the Department of Defense and ensure that there are no “potential vulnerabilities.” The Pentagon says the project will develop a methodology that will establish security measures and counter unauthorized use of IP addresses.
The company claims that its access to the IP addresses is under a dynamic routing protocol responsible for Internet traffic. The statement said the Pentagon’s IP addresses were public but had to be redirected through the company.
Global Resource Systems was established in September 2020; it does not have a public website or federal contracts publicly available, emphasizing The Washington Post. It remains unclear why the Pentagon chose this hitherto unknown company to assess the security of its Internet space. Furthermore, as the newspaper notes, it is unclear what prompted the Ministry of Defense to start analyzing IP addresses that have remained unused for many years.
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