US government hacked: 4 million workers’ information stolen

THE United States has been rocked by a hack that may have led to four million workers being compromised. And now China has been blamed.

Hacker using laptop. Lots of digits on the computer screen.

HACKERS have broken into the US government personnel office and stole identifying information of at least four million federal workers.

Investigators say they have traced the hack to the Chinese government, suspecting the Chinese military of compiling a “massive” database of Americans, CNN quotes intelligence officials as saying.

It is not know what the database is for.

Nearly every federal agency has reportedly been affected by the breach.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that at the beginning of May, data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department was compromised.

“The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the statement said.

A US official who declined to be identified said the data breach could potentially affect every federal agency. One key question is whether intelligence agency employee information was compromised.

The Office of Personnel Management is the human resources department for the federal government, and it conducts background checks for security clearances. The OPM conducts more than 90 per cent of federal background investigations, according to its website.

In November, a former Department of Homeland Security contractor disclosed another cyberbreach that compromised the private files of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands of other federal employees.

DHS said its intrusion detection system, known as EINSTEIN, which screens federal internet traffic to identify potential cyber threats, identified the hack of OPM’s systems and the Interior Department’s data centre, which is shared by other federal agencies.

“DHS is continuing to monitor federal networks for any suspicious activity and is working aggressively with the affected agencies to conduct investigative analysis to assess the extent of this alleged intrusion,” the statement said.