At a time when Internet espionage is occurring at an unprecedented rate, the U.S. government announced on Thursday that the computer files of 48,439 federal workers may have recently been compromised after a cyberattack targeted a federal contractor.
The attack on KeyPoint Government Solutions is the second breach this year at a major company handling national security background investigations of federal employees seeking security clearances, reported The Associated Press.
Nathalie Arriola from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has already begun notifying workers that their files could be in jeopardy, and said free credit monitoring will be offered to those affected.
So far, an investigation into the breach found "no conclusive evidence to confirm sensitive information was removed from the system," Arriola said, according to the AP. She added that KeyPoint is working closely with her agency to "implement additional security controls."
Fifty OPM workers were affected by the breach, but the agency wouldn't disclose which other federal agencies may have been affected, nor would they say whether a foreign state was suspected to be behind the breach.
A CNN investigation shows that cyber attacks on U.S. business and federal agencies are increasing at a rate never seen before.
"There were almost 61,000 cyber attacks and security breaches across the entire federal government last year according to a recent Obama administration report," CNN reported.
Incidents involving government agencies have increased 35 percent between 2010 and 2013, from around 34,000 to 46,000, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
After a recent attack on White House and State Department networks, the State Department had to shut down its email system for days last month to repair damages, The Guardian reported. Since then, data from 800,000 U.S. Postal Service workers was compromised in a China-linked attack and the National Weather Service has reported attacks as well.
The Energy Department was hit last July, and sensitive personal information of more than 100,000 workers was stolen, including dates and places of birth and social security and bank account numbers, CNN said.
Attacks are often the result of spies looking to infiltrate government networks, but hackers are also simply looking for personal information much of the time, and government computer systems make an easy target.
Government officials are hesitant to accuse any specific country of being responsible for the attacks, and no country of origin has been confirmed, but earlier attacks have been blamed on Russian and Chinese attackers, with the latest Sony attacks thought to be linked to North Korea.
