"America’s Job Link Alliance — Technical Support (AJLA-TS) learned that a malicious third party ‘hacker’ had exploited vulnerability in the AJL application code that could have permitted the hacker access to the names, social security numbers and dates of birth of job seekers in the AJL systems of ten states," the General Assembly stated on Friday.
The America’s Job Link Alliance said they had no reason to believe anyone other than the hacker had access to the information.
A spokesperson for Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, Eleni Demertzis, said the hack demonstrated the need for the state to fund a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
Demertzis’ comments echoed those by other US government officials following a series of high-profile personnel breaches in the last several years, including background and intelligence information from the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
In April 2015, OPM announced that it had suffered a data breach, jeopardizing the information of more than 21 million current and past US federal workers.
