Unisys comes under investigation for cyber attacks

House Homeland Security committee chairman Bennie Thompson, claimed that Unisys, which holds the $1.7 billion contract to build parts of the Homeland Security Department's computer networks, was at fault for network break-ins.

He said that dozens of computers may have been compromised by hackers, but not been noticed for months.

Data taken from the department's systems was sent to a Web service that connects to Chinese Internet sites, and Unisys gave misleading information to the department about the attacks, Thompson said.

He said it was bad enough that Homeland security was the victim not only of cyber attacks initiated by foreign entities, but also suffered incompetent and possibly illegal activity by the contractor charged with maintaining security on its networks.

Unisys disputed the committee's findings, but company spokeswoman Lisa Meyer would not go into detail because of, ahem, security concerns.

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