Paul -- How old are you? 14? I was "coding websites typing every line out by hand" That's not hacking / programming / working with firewalls and network security which happened here, that's simply formatting. PHP and Java require basic programming language skill, but this is completely unrelated to hacking into a system. On the other hand...
Everyone Else -- Teenagers have hacked into the Pentagon before and made a couple of the worlds worst Trojans / Viruses. Just because you're young doesn't mean you're stupid.
"In 1997, two California teenagers and a trio of Israeli hackers were arrested for hacking into Pentagon servers. Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum, then 18 years old..."
This could've been anyone.. Someone actually trying to get sensitive information, or just a bored teenager with nothing else to do.

Will, USA,

That's funny Wednesday was the opening day of Live Free or Die Hard with Bruce Willis. The movies plot was a former government agent turned cyber-terrorist who begins reeking havoc by hacking into the Pentagon and other servers in the D.C. Capitol.

Joe, del mar, california usa

Given the TRUE role of the pentagon in the US services, I'd say the best a hacker could do is to divert a few deliveries of harmless supplies somewhere. Sensitive systems that control weapons don't answer to firing commands issue by the Pentagon. Either that or every officer below general staff rank in the armed services of the USA just became redundant!

KR, Stockport,

Anyone who puts confidential/secret information on a computer is daft.

Rosemary London, London,

To Paul Wright, lest us nto forget groups like the Black Gate and the Lopht, both of which were groups of hackers of late teen to twenty somethings who were at one point considered some of the most dangerous people in the world due to their abilities as hackers and phreakers.

curtis anderson, gloucester, UK

In my honest opinion i think its a conspiricy from the American goverment; In possibly two to three days i predict a press release quoting that it was a terrorist cell, and subsequently go on a muslim bashing mission.
Futhermore Paul, Perhaps before taking over the world (because obviously you could if you put your mind to it being a teenager) you should take some more english classes at school.

joshua holden, york, uk

Wow. If this is literally a true break-in and not just some hacked DMZ machines, then the Pentagon is in real trouble and they need to hire some real IT help.

Chad, California,

@Paul Wright
yes teenagers could do this if i gave enough time to the cause i would probably be able to achieve this even though i wudnt want to, the point is stop underestimating teenagers we can do a hell of a lot of stuff that you don't credit us for

Jacob Coy, Totton, England

It makes you wonder what level of access the pentagon have allowed IT equipment to have. How can their network be open enough to allow any PC access?
Hackers are seen as miracle workers but they are for the most part exploiters of the lazy and the "inexperienced".
Set up the network so only known machines, that are explicitly adopted" have access. ignore all else. Plus like all VPN's, once in a hacker can see the infrastructure, they can work out their next move.

Ron Wilkins, Hampton Hill, UK

seriously ,this is not a movie with teenagers. Please get real.Some very sophisticated people did this ,probably testing their capabilities. Something more dramatic but along the same lines occurred in Estonia recently.

A.T. Martin, Warsaw, Poland

im a teenager, and well yes im savvy at IT, i know people my age who can actually code websites typing every line out by hand, this isnt easy, and very sad, as for me im into more things to help protect security at our school as i get paid for part time work, there are some guys who try to hack stuff, i mean they make it there hobby, and no teenager is capable of doign this. To end a long story short a teenager couldnt do this.

Paul Wright, Bad Salxuflen, Germany

yes, rodger, but as Mr Gates said “I don’t do e-mail. I’m a very low-tech person.” and as windows is made with the user in mind Unix and Linux may be a a little to high a level for the pentegon... hmmm? With that in mind I doubt that it was a user involved passive ' virus '

ashley, cape town, south africa

I think it not teenagers at all. What idea makes you think it teenagers are doing this activites. More likely to do with organise crime which most hacking happens nowadays. If the internet was run by the government i know there are down sides for this but it can be done then there be no problems with hacking such as USA top departments. Should be more control to stop any crime on the internet as it like the wild west.

Steven Towson, Birmingham, United kingdom

Hackers ain't warriors, they are trespassers, intruders, burglars, thieves, spies or worse.

elizabeth schumann, Paris, France

Can i just say no matter what step's you take to prevent hacking there is always going to be a way around. "if someone makes it then they can break it". if the goverment were not so secretive about the way the do things then hacker's would not bother to hack into system's the whole point of hacking is the adrenaline rush you get. think of it like cracking opening a jar and inside the jar is all the candy... hacking with never go away and the more we rely on technology for are day to day things the more it becomes suspictable for abuse. i can tell you from experience it would take someone who know's a lot about cryptography is damn smart at math's and has a lot of spare time on his hands to crack the pentagon.

Carl, London, United Kingdom.

You've all been watching too many movies and listening to too much security and microsoft FUD.

Spyware and viruses are usually unknowingly downloaded by the user either by viewing an infected site or downloaded infected/infested software.

"implant viruses steal identities", they don't exactly implant anything, most viruses require some sort of user interaction (as stated above), therefore you probably downloaded the virus from a website or an email attachment(more likely).

Another form of gaining peoples details is fake websites that look exactly like a log in page which when you input your details sends them to the owner, please note these pages have different url's than the page you were trying to access.
These links are normally inserted into fake emails pretending to be from your bank, auction site etc.

A security aware user can run Windows safely without any viruses using minimal security.

Windows is mainly affected by this, although Unix and Linux isn't.

Rodger, Bradford,

The British hacker who American prosecutors want to see 'fry' was a UFO fanatic who decided tp hack the Pentagon by looking for machines with blank or unchanged passwords (e.g. passwords like 'password' or 'admin'). Using this approach he succeeded - not exactly sophisticated stuff. I'd bet that this latest hacking attempt on the Pentagon used similar tactics.

All this 'I bet it's teenager's' stuff comes from Hollywood films and ignorance, your average teen hacker is simply a script kiddie, using pre-written scripts downloaded from the web to try to exploit a know vulnerability. In reality a well patched system on a secure-ish network configured with good security practise will be almost impossible to break into. Real hacking threats in fact come from within an organisation or by tricking the system's owner(s) into revealing passwords (e.g. phisihing).

Get wise - we don't need the government to do something about this, just don't be an ignorant or lazy computer owner!

Ian, London, London

It was not a suprise, everything is possible in the world.

king, shanghai, china

Why is it whenever anything is hacked some people jump to the conclusion it is tennage kids hacking in to a system like the pentagons one would take a very talented hacker not just a teenage script kiddie.

Andrew, Armadale,

Yep, teenagers. One minute they're fixing the forever-blinking 12:00 on your dvd player, the next they're hacking the pentagon. You just never know anymore.
Get off my lawn.

R.P.Moore, Denver, CO

No one say it was a kid. I don't think so kid are enable to do that kind of hack, they need to have some formation about advanced math and cryptography etc.. You see that in movie.

srgess, Quebec, Canada

If teenage kids can shut down Pentagon computers, what could well trained terrorist do? Scary!

Charles Howes, Green Bay, Wisconsin

I think you should start looking at teenage kids in big cities who have access to computer equipment quite often. It's really easy for people these days to hack into almost anything you do. That's where spyware and other computer viruses come from. These people are not only hacking into your systems nothing is safe anymore. They hack into other people's computers and implant viruses steal identities and various other things. America needs to crack down on the people who are doing this. The first place I would look to is the teenagers because they know more about computers than most adults.

Candice L.Dantin, Mt.Enterprise, Tx

No way that Pentagon could stop hackers. Hackers are warriors of the techno-age.

An hacker could really make the difference today. Even in a war.

Davide, Roma, Italy