Office of Personnel Management Data Breach
Office of Personnel Management Data Breach | |
---|---|
Short Title | The United States Office of Personnel Management Was Hacked |
Location | United States |
Date | June 2015 |
Solove Harm | Insecurity, Interrogation |
Information | Identifying, Authenticating, Professional |
Threat Actors | The United States Office of Personnel Management, Hackers from China |
Individuals | |
Affected | Employees of The United States Office of Personnel Management |
High Risk Groups | Politicians |
Tangible Harms |
The database of Office of Personnel Management was hacked in 2015. Personal information of more than 20 million individuals was compromised.
Description
In June 2015 the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced the theft of personal information. A cyberattack on its systems compromised the personal information of 4.2 million federal employees. Later in June OPM also reported one more data breach that compromised the data of 21.5 million of current, former, and prospective employees and contractors. Insecurity
Information that hackers gained access to included employees’ Social Security numbers, job assignments, performance ratings, and training information. Usernames and passwords these individuals used in the OPM systems were also stolen.
Another violation that can be identified here is Interrogation, as hackers' actions can be interpreted as probing for personal information through OPM systems.
Some suspect that the Chinese government is responsible for the attacks in frames of building a database of US government employees.
This breach is reported to be one of the largest in federal government systems.
Amid criticisms, the director of OPM Katherine Archuleta has stepped down.
Laws and Regulations
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/world/asia/us-decides-to-retaliate-against-chinas-hacking.html
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44111.pdf