US officials believe Lockheed Martin was hacked by China

Many US officials suspect that the latest cyber attacks on Lockheed Martin were orchestrated by some individual or an organization in China.

"It's unclear at this point precisely who conducted the attacks, but given past history with these sorts of things, there's a strong tendency to look east. The Far East, in fact, and a country that not so long ago hosted the Olympics," said one U.S. official who asked for anonymity, but was reluctant to point the finger at China by name.

Besides, official and private U.S. cyber-security told Reuters that it was difficult to trace attacks like the one that caused Lockheed temporarily to instruct employees to curb remote access to company networks as hackers usually lay elaborate false trails to cover their tracks.

However, one US official with the knowledge of progress on the investigation noted that US authorities increasingly suspect the Lockheed hack originated with "someone in China."

In an official statement Lockheed reported that on May 21, the company detected what it described as a "significant and tenacious attack" on its networks. The company said it detected the attack "almost immediately," took "aggressive actions" to protect its systems and succeeded in insuring that no data of any kind was compromised.

Additionally, people familiar with the situation say that hackers penetrated the defense contractor's networks using data stolen in March by hackers which could be used to reduce the effectiveness of SecureID tokens produced by EMC Corp. Companies widely use such tokens to provide their staff with secure remote access to computer networks.