According to a statement released by Gannett and posted on militarytimes.com, the attack took place on June 7, and resulted in the compromise of personal subscriber information such as "first and last name, userID, password, email address, the internal number we assigned to the account, and, if provided, ZIP code, duty status, paygrade, and branch of service."

Hackers, who have never been shy about taking their shots at Pentagon-controlled computer systems, apparently decided to gain personal information of service members not by targeting military servers but rather the servers of sites members are known to frequent. Sites targeted in the attack include DefenseNews, the Military Times, the Federal Times, the Army Times, the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Journal, the Armed Forces Journal, the Navy Times, the Air Force Times, the Marine Corps Times. When looking at that list one doesn't have to think too hard about the intended victims of such an attack.

In their statement Gannett says that they are currently investigating the attack via an "outside computer forensics company." The company also urges effected users to "to take this opportunity to reset or strengthen your passwords" on accounts that may have been compromised.

While this attack may ultimately yield little in the way of actual damage to the service members who were victims, the fact that such sensitive government information like duty status and paygrade were stored on privately run servers which were then compromised surely raises some serious concerns.

As more and more government agencies are looking towards cloud computing and other private ventures as a means of storing sensitive material, the Gannett attack serves as a reminder that "security" on the internet is a relative concept at best.