Data Breach Hit Millions of US Government Workers

June 5, 2015: For a “massive breach” affecting the data of millions of US government workers Chinese hackers are being suspected and the breach could potentially affect every federal agency, as per officials.

Almost four million current and past employees have been affected,the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed on Thursday. It was thought to have originated in China, usan Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said.

According to officials information stored on OPM databases includes employee job assignments, performance reviews and training.The records of four million former and current government employees may have been breached.The agency is contacting all of those potentially affected, offering to insure them against identity fraud. Of even greater concern may be the fact that security clearance information could have been targeted on government officials.

Embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan told Reuters news agency that the accusations were “not responsible, and counterproductive”. The Chinese embassy in Washington warned against “jumping to conclusions”.

Meantime, the breach did not involve background checks and clearance investigations, officials said. The OPM detected a “cyber-intrusion” in April 2015 using a new cyber security system known as Einstein. Investigation on breach is going on said FBI said.

A cyber security firm – warned that the hacked data could be used to impersonate or blackmail federal employees with access to sensitive information, said Ken Ammon, chief strategy officer of Xceedium.