Up to four million US government personnel records compromised by an alleged China-based cyber attack, in fresh embarrassment for Obama administration
Suspected hackers from China have achieved a massive data-breach in the US, compromising the personnel records of around 4 million US government employees, senior US government officials admitted on Thursday.
The cyber-attack on the US government’s Office of Personnel Management was described by one US government official as “one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen” according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
It is understood to have occurred last April, and is now being investigated by the FBI, according to multiple US media reports.
As a result of the incident the Office of Personnel Management said in a statement that it will send notifications to approximately four million individuals.
The intruders gained access to information that included employees’ Social Security numbers, job assignments, performance ratings and training information, agency officials said. No direct-deposit data was exposed, officials said. They could not say for certain what data was taken, only what the hackers gained access to.
The news of the hack comes less than two months after the White House was forced to concede that Russian hackers may have read President Barack Obama’s unclassified emails after successfully hacking unclassified emails systems at the White House and State Department.
The Office of Personnel Management detected new malicious activity affecting its information systems in April and the Department of Homeland Security said it concluded at the beginning of May that the agency's data had been compromised.
“We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously, and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” an FBI spokesman said.
The breach affected IT systems the Department of the Interior's data centre, which is a shared service centre for federal agencies, a Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Since the intrusion, the Department said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks.
Pin-pointing the source of hacking is notoriously difficult, and last night officials said it not yet clear whether or not the attack was state-sponsored.
“China is not a monolith,” one official told Politico, “There are many different things that can be Chinese. You may be seeing something where we’re not going to be pointing the finger [in public], because we don’t have an indictment to lay down.”
The Obama administration has frequently raised concerns about Chinese hackers, taking the highly unusual step in May last year of announcing charges against five members of the China’s People’s Liberation Army known to be part of an Shanghai-based hacking collective known as Unit 61398.
However the Chinese embassy in Washington said that it had made great efforts to combat cyberattacks.
Zhu Haiquan, the embassy spokesman added: "Jumping to conclusions and making hypothetical accusation is not responsible, and counterproductive,"
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