"We're From The Government And We're Here To Release Your Sex Secrets To The Chinese"
Bill Gertz at Free Beacon writes about the massive data breach at the government's Office of Personnel Management:
Damage from the OPM attack appears to be increasing.On Capitol Hill Wednesday, OPM Director Karen Archuleta revealed that as many as 18 million Social Security numbers contained in a database on federal security clearance holders appear to have been compromised. She declined to comment when asked if the total number of federal workers who were victimized in the OPM hack could be as many as 32 million.
OPM's official estimate of the total number is that 4.2 million current and former federal workers were victims of the cyber attacks that was discovered in April and appears to have been carried out since at least December.
So far, two OPM databases were breached, a central personal network and a separate security clearance database used to check the backgrounds of federal employees involved in classified work. That database involves millions of people who are questioned about security clearance renewals or new clearances.
What kind of secrets got released? Shane Harris writes at The Daily Beast:
A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers' haul: information about workers' sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity.Those details, which are now presumed to be in the hands of Chinese spies, are found in the so-called "adjudication information" that U.S. investigators compile on government employees and contractors who are applying for security clearances. The exposure suggests that the massive computer breach at the Office of Personnel Management is more significant and potentially damaging to national security than officials have previously said.
Three former U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the adjudication information would effectively provide dossiers on current and former government employees, as well as contractors. It gives foreign intelligence agencies a roadmap for finding people with access to the government's most highly classified secrets.
I've been reading the site for a long time, but haven't felt compelled to post a comment until today. My wife is a federal law enforcement officer, and she was told her information was part of the hack. That means MY information was also part of the hack since I've been part of the re-investigations she has every couple of years. Time to get life lock or something like it I guess.
smoose at June 25, 2015 1:42 PM
" . . . discovered in April and appears to have been carried out since at least December."
On the bright side - isn't that time frame rather quick for government?
Reminds me of my former company - the IT manager would get these calls from the FBI every so often - "Be aware someone is trying to hack your system." Only to find out that it was about an incident that happened months ago and the IT folks already handled it.
charles at June 25, 2015 2:44 PM
Rule of thumb: when a database system is breached, assume all records have been copied.
Do you know how many terabytes you can transmit in a 4 month time frame? I'm going to guess that OPM's data center(s) are on fiber, and have bandwidth out the wazzoo. I'm also going to guess they're not monitoring data usage, or at least not closely.
So, yeah, smoose, lifelock or Zander insurance's product will be in your future.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 25, 2015 5:01 PM
It appears that they got my information too -- it depends on how far back the computerized records go. I got my first clearance back when everything was on paper, but my understanding is that at some point all of those records were scanned, so they may have that too.
I don't know that Lifelock is going to do any good. The identity info contained in those databases is so complete that the only way to prevent your identity from being stolen will involve a degree of locking-up to the extent that the only way you will be able to do anything in the future is to do it in person. Imagine not being able to pay bills or buy anything over the Internet.
The only way they are going to be able to fix this is to violate the cardinal rule of Social Security numbers, and assign everyone who was impacted a new number. That will forever screw up Social Security accounting and work credits, as well as tax returns.
Cousin Dave at June 26, 2015 6:50 AM
And by the way, if this hack did what I think it did, our entire covert intelligence community worldwide has now been burned. The next President will have to rebuild it from scratch. How much damage will be done in the meantime?
Cousin Dave at June 26, 2015 6:52 AM
So now we can only trust those not in authority, with no government clearances, and not working for the Feds, namely me. I was way ahead of that curve.
MarkD at June 26, 2015 11:46 AM
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