A DoD Contractor Gave Claude Access to Pentagon Systems

An Accenture contractor gave a personal Claude Code account access to a secure Pentagon system used by multiple intelligence agencies, potentially exposing login credentials and network details to an outside website.

The AI coding agent operated on the Department of Defense network for two months before it was detected and the vulnerability patched, according to sources cited by WIRED.

Accenture rejected the allegations.

“We take all concerns seriously. These allegations were thoroughly and independently investigated and found to be without merit. We fully complied with our legal and contractual obligations,” a company spokesperson told the publication.

The company did not identify who conducted the investigation or clarify whether an incident occurred. The Pentagon declined to discuss its networks or systems.

Administrative Access

The contractor allegedly connected a production environment to a personal account for Anthropic’s coding tool to automate software development, deployment, and cloud server setup.

According to a source, supplying the agent with the contractor’s credentials gave it administrative privileges and enabled it to bypass protections applied during ordinary logins.

The agent could also commit code to the system on the employee’s behalf.

While connecting to the internet to perform its tasks, the agent appears to have transmitted credentials, passwords, and a map of the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network, or NIPRNet, to a third-party website.

WIRED withheld the website’s name to limit further exposure. The publication said the National Institute of Standards and Technology had previously flagged it as high risk because a vulnerability could allow attackers to inject instructions into an AI agent and steal credentials.

Sensitive Unclassified Information

The affected environment held controlled unclassified information, a category of sensitive material restricted from public release.

NIPRNet handles unclassified information and connects to the internet, although it operates under extensive security controls.

“It puts all the data that’s in there at risk,” a source familiar with the incident told WIRED.

There is no indication that hackers accessed classified or top-secret systems.

The report also does not establish what happened to the information after it reached the outside service.

Security specialists nevertheless warned that credentials and network architecture could help an intruder navigate systems and identify valuable information.

Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency hacker and faculty member at security consultancy IANS, said another risk concerned software tested on NIPRNet before deployment to classified networks.

An attacker with access could insert malicious code into a tool that was subsequently transferred to a more sensitive environment without adequate review, he said.

That was a potential route of compromise, rather than an outcome established by the report.

Reporting Under Scrutiny

Sources told WIRED that Accenture personnel did not initially treat the incident as urgent and that the company initially failed to notify the government.

The report said defense employees and federal contractors must report cybersecurity incidents within 72 hours of discovery.

Accenture maintained that it met its legal and contractual responsibilities.

Claude is currently prohibited for DOD staff, WIRED reported. Anthropic referred WIRED to policies restricting unauthorized interference with military infrastructure and circumvention of security controls.

Accenture holds more than $3.5 billion in federal contracts, including nearly $605 million with the DOD.

Matt Triner, founder of Washington-based IT consultancy Hunter Strategy, said contractors faced incentives that could discourage disclosure because reporting a breach might jeopardize government work.

He said the incident described to WIRED required reporting.

He added that pressure to deliver software faster and more cheaply was intensifying existing tensions between contract performance and security.