The US Department of Defense this week regained control of 175 million IP addresses that were transferred to Global Resource Systems earlier this year, according to The Washington Post. “The secret program of the Pentagon, which began on the last day of Trump's presidency, is over. But the secret remains, ”the newspaper writes.
As the newspaper wrote in April, a previously unknown firm received from the Pentagon 56 million Internet addresses belonging to the department, but not used by it. This happened on January 20 – the day when Joe Biden, who replaced Donald Trump, took over as President of the United States. By April, the number of IP addresses under the control of Global Resource Systems exceeded 170 million. WP notes that this volume is about 6% of the total number of addresses on the Internet.
Brett Goldstein, a spokesman for the Department of Defense's Digital Security Service (DDS), told the publication that the company was involved in a pilot project aimed at “identifying potential vulnerabilities” and “preventing unauthorized use of the Pentagon's IP address space.” He described this project as one of the “many efforts of the Ministry of Defense aimed at strengthening protection in cyberspace in response to complex persistent threats.”
On September 10, the defense department announced that this program was completed and the addresses came under the control of the information network of the Department of Defense (DODIN) and the US Cyber Command. The Pentagon did not specify the details of the program and how exactly it contributed to the strengthening of cybersecurity. The spokesman for the Ministry of Defense also did not explain why the department chose Global Resource Systems to implement this program. The company did not respond to WP's request.
Global Resource Systems was registered in October 2020 in the state of Delaware, Business Insider wrote, citing company documents. Its headquarters are located in Plantation, Florida. As the Assosiated Press reported, the company does not have a website, but the domain name is grscorp.com. Also, journalists could not find information about any government contracts concluded with the organization.
In April, Business Insider published an article, the authors of which put forward possible versions of the reasons for the transfer of IP addresses to the Florida company. Among them – the creation of the so-called honeypot (from the English honeypot – “a pot of honey”) – software that simulates the operation of a vulnerable device or server. Due to this, the Ministry of Defense hoped to attract hackers in order to study the tactics of attackers and identify the vulnerabilities they are targeting, the newspaper wrote. Another version was the preparation for the development of software and servers to detect suspicious activity on the Internet.
