OPM fingerprint hack 5 times worse than previously thought

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    US government hack stole fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees | Technology | The Guardian
    ▻http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/23/us-government-hack-stole-fingerprints

    The number of people applying for or receiving security clearances whose fingerprint images were stolen in one of the worst government data breaches is now believed to be 5.6 million, not 1.1 million as first thought, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Wednesday.

    The agency was the victim of what the US believes was a Chinese espionage operation that affected an estimated 21.5 million current and former federal employees or job applicants. The theft could give Chinese intelligence a huge leg up in recruiting informants inside the US government, experts believe. It also could help the Chinese identify US spies abroad, according to American officials.

    The White House has said it’s going to discuss cybersecurity with Chinese president Xi Jinping when he visits Barack Obama later this week.

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      Blog: OPM fingerprint hack 5 times worse than previously thought
      ▻http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/09/opm_fingerprint_hack_5_times_worse_than_previously_thought.html

      The hack of personal information from the Office of Personnel Management is easily the most underreported big story of the year, and a catastrophe that will directly affect our national security for years to come.

      At first, the OPM admitted that a few million records had been exposed. Then it become 14 million. Now it’s up to 21 million federal employees, contractors, and, in many cases, their families. Social Security numbers, personal medical information, background checks – all have been exposed to the hackers, thought to work for the Chinese government.

      The agency’s original estimate was 1.1 million fingerprints.

      This is extremely sensitive information that poses an immediate danger to American spies and undercover law enforcement agents.

      As an OPM spokesman told CNNMoney in July: “It’s across federal agencies. It’s everybody.”

      Hackers now have a gigantic database of American government employee fingerprints that can be used to positively identify those employees.

      Anyone with these records could check to see if a diplomat at a U.S. embassy is secretly an employee of an American intelligence agency. That person could then be targeted for arrest or assassination.

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      Clapper: ‘We Don’t Know Exactly What Was Taken in the OPM Breach’ | Foreign Policy
      ▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/24/clapper-we-dont-know-exactly-what-was-taken-in-the-opm-breach

      “We don’t actually know what was actually exfiltrated,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during an appearance at Georgetown University. “So what you’re hearing about is absolutely the worst case.”

      On Wednesday, OPM revealed that as many as 5.6 million fingerprint records were among the data stolen in a breach disclosed in June. That’s up from their previous estimate of 1.1 million fingerprint records. The 5.6 million people whose fingerprint records were compromised are a subset of the total number of people whose records were stolen from OPM. The total number of people whose records — including documents gathered during the course of background investigations for current, former, and prospective federal employees seeking security clearances — were compromised remains at 21.5 million.
      […]
      Clapper has said previously that the U.S. government has no indication that the stolen information has been used against American agents, and said Thursday that the intelligence community has been searching for “evidence of it turning up some place,” but it so far hasn’t.

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