- Sputnik International
World
Get the latest news from around the world, live coverage, off-beat stories, features and analysis.

US Cabinet Secretaries May Have Been Hit in Government Hack

© AFP 2023 / Thomas SamsonThe personal information of current and former US Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials may have also been compromised by the latest data breach into US government computer systems
The personal information of current and former US Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials may have also been compromised by the latest data breach into US government computer systems - Sputnik International
Subscribe
The personal information of current and former US Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials may have also been compromised by the latest data breach into US government computer systems, US media reported on Tuesday.

In 2010, the United States established a policy governing zero-day software attacks against adversaries. - Sputnik International
Zero-Day, Zero Policy? US Launched Unregulated Hack Attacks, Docs Show
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Government sources briefed on the incident told ABC News that personal information about cabinet secretaries, employees from the US Marshals Service, Secret Service as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) may have been accessed in the cyberattack.

Last week, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that a massive cybersecurity breach in April 2015 possibly compromised the personal data of up to 4 million current and former US federal employees.

A government source told ABC News that the hack can potentially be used to “map relationships across the entire federal government” by constructing a database of “who works with who.”

Employees from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency have not been impacted, although if they worked in another part of the government where their information is managed by OPM, their data may have also been compromised, the source explained.

Employees at the Department of Defense are “believed” to have been spared because their information is managed by a classified, internal.mil computer network instead of the.gov address managed by OPM, according to the media report.

Currently, authorities are trying to determine what data was stolen in the hack, but are considering “all exposed information as potentially stolen,” the government source said.

OPM serves as the US government’s human resource department. The agency's responsibilities include the management federal pension benefits and conducting background investigations for security clearances.

Following the announcement of the hack US media cited an anonymous US official saying Chinese hackers were behind the attack. China has denied the allegations.

The White House has not made public who they believe is behind the attack.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала