The second attack is being blamed on Chinese state actors, and it netted the archives of Standard Form 86, which records applicants’ mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies and lists of contacts and relatives.
Everyone with security clearance has to fill in one of these forms, meaning that the attackers now have the personal details, identities, and blackmail info on everyone who works in sensitive areas for the US government.
Elements of the US government are agitating furiously for backdoor in cryptography, meaning that the next breach could result in every piece of sensitive information held by individuals, governments and corporations being an open book to the attackers.
“This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance,” said Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official. “That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer. The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That’s a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies.”
Second OPM Hack Revealed: Even Worse Than The First [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
(Image: 1017013,
Biblioteca de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias del Trabajo Universidad de Sevilla, CC-BY)