The US Government admitted today that they were hacked and the info on 4 million government employees is out in the wild:
“As a result of the incident,” uncovered in April, the Office of Personnel Management said it “will send notifications to approximately four million individuals.”
It added additional exposures “may come to light.”
The government’s personnel department handles hundreds of thousands of sensitive security clearances and background investigations on prospective employees each year.
It was not immediately clear whether the hack affected President Barack Obama, other senior government officials or the intelligence community.
Early indications say it was the Chinese that was behind the hack. Regardless of who it was, this is very embarrassing for the US government. It’s bad enough when private institutions can’t keep personal info safe from hackers. But when the US government is the victim of this sort of hack, it should send a message that they really have a huge problem on their hands given that they should be the last people to get pwned by hackers.
I think it’s time for them to rethink their IT security strategy.
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This entry was posted on June 4, 2015 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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US Agency That Handles Security Clearances Gets Pwned By Hackers
The US Government admitted today that they were hacked and the info on 4 million government employees is out in the wild:
“As a result of the incident,” uncovered in April, the Office of Personnel Management said it “will send notifications to approximately four million individuals.”
It added additional exposures “may come to light.”
The government’s personnel department handles hundreds of thousands of sensitive security clearances and background investigations on prospective employees each year.
It was not immediately clear whether the hack affected President Barack Obama, other senior government officials or the intelligence community.
Early indications say it was the Chinese that was behind the hack. Regardless of who it was, this is very embarrassing for the US government. It’s bad enough when private institutions can’t keep personal info safe from hackers. But when the US government is the victim of this sort of hack, it should send a message that they really have a huge problem on their hands given that they should be the last people to get pwned by hackers.
I think it’s time for them to rethink their IT security strategy.
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This entry was posted on June 4, 2015 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.