The cyber attack that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) fell victim to last week is much more serious than originally expected.
The human resources branch of the government was allegedly infiltrated by Chinese hackers who went "undetected for more than a year," grabbing personnel date from every federal employee, including social security numbers, according to a report from ABC News.
Upon infiltrating the system, the hackers targeted "four different segments," one of which houses digital paperwork filled out by employees with security clearances. OPM spokespeople have said that information does not include names of employees' family members, but information ABC attained tells a different story:
"...Officials speaking on the condition of anonymity say unequivocally such information was put at serious risk by the OPM hack. Of utmost concern are U.S. employees stationed overseas, including in countries such as China, whose government would covet personal information on relatives and contacts of American officials living in the communist country, according to officials.
'If the SF-86's associated with this hack were, in their entirety, part of the stolen information, then that would mean the potential release of a staggering amount of information, affecting an exponential amount of people,' one U.S. official told ABC News on Sunday.'"
Furthermore, The Associated Press is reporting that the address, birth date, job pay history, health insurance, life insurance, pension information, age, gender and race data of every federal employee has been comprised. The AP received the information after getting their hands on a letter written from J. David Cox, president of the American Federal of Government Employees, to OPM director Katherine Archuleta.
"We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous," Cox wrote. His union added that the hack is "an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce."
It is not known just how much information was taken in the hack because OPM and other government agencies could not put a finger on exactly how much information is stored in their system.
The hack was only brought to light because OPM was in the process op updating equipment and systems. They immediately contacted the Department of Homeland Security and FBI upon realizing the "anomalies," according to ABC News.
