The hackers who hacked into the USA government’s personnel management agency data has affected the 21.5 million people, the hackers are believed to be operating from China with more estimation than previously anticipated, USA officials said on Thursday.
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The breakdown of those affected includes 19.7 million people who applied for background investigations and 1.8 million non-applicants, predominantly spouses or housemates.
Hackers downloaded Social Security numbers, health histories or other highly sensitive data from OPM’s databases.
“Such incompetence is inexcusable”, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, in repeating his calls for Archuleta’s resignation.
Archuleta, who has been at the helm of OPM since November 2013, submitted her resignation Friday morning.
A senior administration official said Thursday that Obama’s views on Archuleta have not changed since June, when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the President has “confidence that she is the right person for the job”.
Yet Archuleta insisted Thursday she would not step down, telling reporters during a conference call, “I am committed to the work that I am doing”. They also seemed certain to intensify debate in Washington over what the government must do to address its substantial weaknesses in cybersecurity, long the subject of dire warnings but seldom acted upon by agencies, Congress or the White House. Officials said earlier this year that the hackers had stolen records of about 4.2 million people. The usernames and passwords used by applicants were also stolen, OPM said.
Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator at the National Security Council, said that “at this point the investigation into the attribution of this event is still ongoing and we are exploring all of the different options that we have”.
The data theft, which came to light in April, was attributed to China, but Beijing has publicly denied any involvement.
Each and every day, as we investigate these attacks and aggressively work on the redesign of our computer network, we are keeping in mind the millions of men and women who have and continue to serve the American people.
At least 1.1 million of the stolen records included fingerprints, the OPM said in a news release.
The number of victims of the massive hacking at a United States government agency, holding the personnel records of millions, is around five times higher than what was initially assessed, a subsequent investigation revealed.
“It is a huge deal”, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told a Senate panel on Wednesday.
“They’re more interested in recruiting spies or blackmailing employees or finding out who key government employees are and using this information in much more nefarious ways”.
Sharon Werner, a Chief Attorney with the Consumer Protection Division says big concerns arise when social security numbers are compromised.
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Werner says credit reports help pinpoint if your sensitive information has been compromised.
