The infamous hacking group Anonymous managed to swipe data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
He added: “Security and data stewardship are integral to the Census Bureau mission”.
Anonymous hackers have swiped databases from servers used by the US Census Bureau, and dumped their contents online. The group tweeted about the attack on Wednesday and began posting links to troves of data and documents it had obtained.
The Census Bureau insists the breach is not that severe, acknowledging “unauthorized access” to its systems but telling IBTimes the data taken was “non-confidential” and that it came from “an external system that is not part of the Census Bureau internal network”. “Access to the external system has been restricted while our IT forensics team investigates”, Census Bureau spokesman Michael Cook said in a statement on Thursday first published by The Register. The leaked files also include a database of usernames and hashed passwords, which appear to have been run through the MD5 or an Oracle DES algorithms. Those responsible are believed to be associated with the loose-knit hackers’ collective Anonymous (as opposed to, say, the Chinese government, the Russian government, or similarly well-armed non-American state actors). “We will remain vigilant in continuing to take every necessary precaution to protect all information”.
Although designed to remove trade barriers between the US, Europe and Asian countries, there are fears, as with any such deal, that the agreements could lead to a loss of US sovereignty and jobs. Among the many oppositions to the twin agreements is the way they have been drawn up in secret, with Anonymous being vocal in its opposition.
The incident comes after the Office of Personnel Management admitted earlier this month that it suffered a massive database breach, resulting in the loss of personally identifiable information of 21.5 million current, former, and prospective federal employees and contractors.
“[M]y real concern is that [the OPM breaches] desensitized the public and government officials to smaller but still damaging breaches like the attack on the Census Bureau”, Merza said.
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