A massive attack on the federal government’s computer system has left millions of federal workers vulnerable to identity theft.
The data breach targeted the federal government,particularly 4 million people who work for the executive branch of government. Their personal information may have been compromised through the Office of Personnel Management database.
Law enforcement and government sources have said the breach was carried out by the Chinese government. That was not a surprise to a local cybersecurity expert News4Jax’s Scott Johnson spoke with by phone.
“It is considered a hardened target, so a great deal of resources had to be expended to acquire this info,” Chris Hamer told Johnson. “The amount of resources needed to penetrate a hardened target like this eliminate a lot of the smaller groups or the social hacking groups or some of the individual attacks.”
Hamer does point out that while this system is a hardened target, it’s not information related to national security like the military, which he said would be a lot more difficult to breach.
The FBI is now investigating how the breach happened, and it’s still unclear who exactly had their personal information compromised.
Information on roughly 4 million people may have been stolen, and News4Jax is told former government employees may also be at risk. Anyone who works or has worked for the government is urged to check their financial statements and get an updated credit report.
“What this gives to a foreign interest is the leverage to basically go into federal personnel, any agency personnel and find out who their kids are, who their families are, where their bank accounts are, what their financial status is,” Hamer said.
Homeland Security learned of the breach in April, but it took a month to learn what data had been compromised.
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