Hackers who stole personnel data on millions of USA federal employees got away with more fingerprint images than originally thought, according to the government agency hit by the massive cyber attack.
The announcement about the scale of the hack comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a state visit to the US. The Obama administration, which earlier this year insinuated that it might punish Beijing with sanctions over the suspected theft of US trade secrets, has said that cybersecurity would be a major focus of his talks with Xi on Friday.
That’s more than five times the 1.1 million government officials estimated when the cyberattacks were initially disclosed over the summer. Officials from OPM and the Defense Department only recently discovered that the additional fingerprints had been stolen as they continued to assess the data breach, OPM said in a statement. The White House has been coy about the significance of nearly 6 million stolen fingerprint records.
So far there has been immaterial evidence pertaining to abuse of the data breach, however, the matter could result in counterintelligence issues.
An interagency working group including members from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense (DOD) and other intelligence community members are studying how cyber criminals could potentially exploit the data. “From the very beginning, the OPM data breach has not been handled very well from an outsider point of view with a lot of conflicting information, and it is very hard to believe we know all that we need to about the breach at this point”, Kouns told eWEEK.
The OPM acts as the personnel office for the United States government and keeps records on 21.5 million federal staff.
However, the spokesman insisted that “Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited”. The people relevant to the matter at hand stated that even though there are about 21.5 million people that would be affected by the breach, the intensity of the situation is not threatening as of yet.
The stolen records included detailed biographical forms that federal employees must fill out to obtain security clearances, and they would have provided identifying information about friends and family in the USA and overseas. The OPM added that if an imminent threat pertaining to the fingerprint data should arise, the government would provide individuals directly affected by the threat with relevant information.
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