Last Updated on June 13, 2015
The Office of Personal Management, the independent agency of the United States that manages the civil service of the federal government, will notify about 4 million current and former federal employees, that their personal data may have been compromised following an intrusion by state-sponsored hackers.
The intrusion, occurred in December 2014 and discovered in April 2015, sets a new record as the largest breach of federal employee data in recent years and follows the one occurred in March 2014 and discovered in July of the same year.
The attackers have been able to access the information of 4 million current and former federal employees, and the compromised information (which apparently was not even encrypted) includes employees’ Social Security numbers, job assignments, performance ratings and training information.
Unnamed government officials told the Washington Post that the attack probably originated from China, similarly to what happened for the previous intrusion.
Curiously, the latest intrusion has been discovered thanks to new tools”, adopted after the hack of the past year, as indicated in the official statement released by the OPM.
