20committee posted: "With each passing day the U.S. government’s big
hacking scandal gets worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of
Personnel Management? Having initially assured the public that the loss was
not
all that serious, OPM’s data breach now looks very g"
New post on The XX Committee
(http://20committee.com/author/20committee/)
_China’s Spies Hit the Blackmail Jackpot_
(http://20committee.com/2015/06/12/chinas-spies-hit-the-blackmail-jackpot/)
by _20committee_ (http://20committee.com/author/20committee/)
With each passing day the U.S. government’s big hacking scandal gets
worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of Personnel Management?
Having initially assured the public that the loss was not all that serious,
OPM’s data breach now looks very grave. The lack of database encryption
appears foolhardy, while OPM ignoring _repeated warnings_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/chinese-hackers-may-be-behind-anthem-premera-attacks.html?s
mid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0) about its cyber
vulnerabilities implies severe dysfunction in Washington.
To say nothing of the news that hackers were scouring OPM systems _for
over a year_
(http://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/opm-hack-deeper-publicly-acknowledged-undetected-year-sources/story?id=31689059)
before they were detected.
It’s alarming that intruders got hold of information about _every federal
worker_
(http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/opm-hackers-stole-data-on-every-federal-employee-20150611)
, particularly because OPM previously conceded
that “only” 4 million employees, past and present, had been compromised,
including 2.1 million current ones. Each day brings worse details about
what stands as the biggest data compromise since Edward Snowden _stole_
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2013/06/09/nsa-whistleblower-why-i-did-it.html
) 1.7 million classified documents and fled to Russia.
Then there’s the worrisome matter of what OPM actually does. A somewhat
obscure agency, it’s the federal government’s HR hub and, most important,
it’s _responsible_
(http://www.opm.gov/investigations/background-investigations/) for conducting
90 percent of federal background investigations,
adjudicating some 2 million security clearances every year. If you’ve ever
held a clearance with Uncle Sam, there’s a good chance you’re in OPM files
somewhere.
Read the rest at _The Daily Beast_
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/11/china-s-spies-hit-the-blackmail-jackpot-with-every-data-on-federa
l-worker.html) ...
_20committee_ (http://20committee.com/author/20committee/) | June 12,
2015 at 07:38 | Categories: _Counterintelligence_
(http://20committee.com/?cat=1354826) , _Espionage_
(http://20committee.com/?cat=88698) , _USG_
(http://20committee.com/?cat=1126077) | URL: http://wp.me/p2zHUk-Dv
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[New post] China’s Spies Hit the Blackmail Jackpot
Hot4azintop via PoliticalForum Fri, 12 Jun 2015 09:04:28 -0700
