According to some media organizations, the FBI has provided some details on the data breach on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that occurred a few weeks ago. Director James Comey reportedly told members of the Senate in closed-door briefings, that the number of victims could be in the range of 18 million. It also has come to light that not only past and current federal employees were affected, but now it believes prospective ones were as well.
To add insult to injury for the federal government, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has reported that has found unauthorized activity on three computers, indicating that this organization may have been affected by the same hack as the OPM. It isn’t known when this one occurred and NARA has not found evidence that administrative access occurred. It did admit that some files were found in abnormal places. The affected workstations were cleaned and re-imaged.
Another report on the OPM breach mentions that the 18 million number pertains to only a single database and the actual number could be even more. This is because the information gained from the background check forms (SF-86) accessed in one of the recent breaches includes information on the applicant as well as family members and acquaintances.
Because the information being provided is not confirmed, it’s best for anyone who may have been affected to continue to monitor credit reports for potentially fraudulent charges. Report anything suspicious to the credit bureaus. In addition, because it still isn’t known how this occurred, don’t re-use log in credentials for any online accounts.
According to CNN, the FBI investigators discovered that that credentials from a breach at KeyPoint Government Solutions, a government contractor that performs background investigations for the OPM, was used to access the databases. This breach was first reported in December and affected personally identifiable information for nearly 50,000 people.
The information being provided to the public continues to be confusing and inconclusive. CNN reports the OPM breach actually occurred before the KeyPoint incident, meaning the hackers used stolen OPM information to get the data at KeyPoint. The government has not attributed the OPM breach to any specific party, but the media is reporting that several government officials have put the responsibility on China. This is backed up by some information security research firms as well, who also blame the Chinese government for the recent attacks against health insurers Anthem and Premera.
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