Hackers breach website used by US intelligence community to solicit vendor contracts
July 28, 2025 1 Comment
HACKERS HAVE COMPROMISED A website used by the United States Intelligence Community (IC) to solicit sensitive contracts from the private sector, according to a new report. The target of the attack, and the methods used by the hackers, appear to point with a high degree of certainty to a state actor.
The website in question belongs to the Acquisition Research Center (ARC), an initiative of the US government’s Acquisition Center of Excellence. Even though the ARC solicits contracts on behalf of the entire US IC, its public-facing website is maintained by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which last week notified several companies affected by the breach.
The ARC online interface is designed for companies in the private sector who want to register as government vendors in the national security space. Once they register through the ARC system, these companies can pitch a variety of intelligence agencies with a particular technology or idea. Recent projects solicited through the ARC system have involved communications interception systems, artificial intelligence-powered data collection or analysis tools, predictive technologies, signature-reduction systems, or various tools used in physical surveillance.
It is believed that the hackers targeted the unclassified portion of the ARC website, seeking personal information about vendors, as well as proprietary intellectual property. An NRO spokesperson told The Washington Times that the breach was being looked at by federal law enforcement but declined to provide further information about what he described as an “ongoing investigation”.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 28 July 2025 | Permalink
intelNews.org 
I would hazard that only the overt information extravagant US would have such a “public-facing website” for serious national security technology pitches.
Interesting “It is believed that the hackers targeted the unclassified portion of the [Acquisition Research Center] ARC website, seeking personal information about vendors, as well as proprietary intellectual property.”
So such cyber penetration would be of especial interest to countries with intelligence agencies large enough to do follow-up targeting. Such countries? China and Russia, of course, but one or two Western countries with large agencies also come to mind.
Then again, enterprising teenage, or older, non-state hackers might just be seeing how far they could get into the ARC system?