As many as 14 MILLION government (current and former) employees were said to be hacked recently, exposing millions of background checks and social security numbers, far higher than the Obama (President of the United States) Administration had suggested, according to two people questioned in the investigation. The somewhat lighter news is that only about 4.2 million of those records are active employers of the government, which is still way out of line.

A union said the cyber theft is more damaging than it first appeared, asserting that hackers stole personnel data and social security numbers for all the federal workers in a central personnel database. Luckily, the file that this data was in only contained the civilian federal employees and not members of Congress, their staff, or military and intelligence agencies. The union believes that the hackers stole information such as military records and veterans’ status information, address, birth date, job and pay history, health insurance, life insurance and pension information, and age, gender and race data. The central personnel data file contains up to 780 pieces of information about each employee.

Also, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said that the hack came from “the Chinese”, and he did not specify as to whether this means it would be from the Chinese government or civilians. Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said last week that Chinese intelligence agencies have for some time been seeking to assemble a database of information about Americans. Those details could be used for blackmail, hijacking, threats, and other related acts.

What do you think about this breach? Do you think this could lead to terrible foreign relations? Share with us.

Powered by WPeMatico

(No Ratings Yet)