US security data obtained by Chinese hackers: Report
US officials say a recent cyber attack by China-linked hackers against US government employees was wider than first acknowledged and has compromised sensitive security clearance information.
Chinese-based hackers appear to have gained access to sensitive background information on US intelligence and military personnel that could potentially expose them to blackmail, US media outlets reported on Friday, citing several unnamed US officials.
The report said US investigators are looking at two separate attacks, widely believed to be from China, accessing the records of as many as four million government employees stored in a database at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The database "is very sensitive and it has lots of interfaces to it," a US official told the Washington Post on condition of anonymity.
A second US official said the database could possibly contain files on some CIA employees. "That's the open question -- whether it's going to hit CIA folks," he said. "It would be a huge deal. They could start unmasking identities."
The OPM database contains highly personal information on employees, including their investment records, family data, financial histories, contacts with foreigners and names of neighbors and friends, according to the report.
OPM detected the breach on its database in April 2015. The cyber attack has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States.
Earlier this week, a federal employees union said the hackers gained sensitive information on all government employees.
The announcement of the hack of the security-clearance database comes a week after OPM disclosed that another personnel system had been compromised. The discovery of the first breach led investigators to find the second.
Washington has not officially accused Beijing of carrying out the recent hacks, but a number of US officials and private cyber security researchers have accused the Chinese government of being behind the intrusions.
The US has, for years, accused the Chinese government and military of conducting computer-based attacks, including efforts to steal information from federal agencies.
China has dismissed the recent hacking allegations as "irresponsible and unscientific."
Beijing says Washington’s cyber attack accusations are hypocritical, since intelligence leaks have revealed that the US itself is the most active perpetrator of cyber espionage against foreign countries, especially against China.
AHT/AGB
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