On Thursday we learned the breadth of the ChiComm cyberattack on the U.S. government; today we learn its depth:
Data stolen from U.S. government computers by suspected Chinese hackers included security clearance information and background checks dating back three decades, U.S. officials said on Friday, underlining the scope of one of the largest known cyber attacks on federal networks. …
The cyber attack was among the most extensive thefts of information on the federal work force, and one U.S. defense official said it was clearly aimed at gaining valuable information for intelligence purposes.
“This is deep. The data goes back to 1985,” a U.S. official said. “This means that they potentially have information about retirees, and they could know what they did after leaving government.”
Access to data from OPM’s computers, such as birth dates, Social Security numbers and bank information, could help hackers test potential passwords to other sites, including those with information about weapons systems, the official said.
“That could give them a huge advantage,” the official said. [emphases added]
Do tell. And I was so hoping it would be no big deal, too. Rats.
Of course this leads to other questions that Captain Ed has already summarized for me:
Were the full investigative files breached, or just summaries? Did it encompass only those who worked directly for the White House since 1985, or for all federal agencies? Did this include those who got cleared...through DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office), now the DSS, to work for defense contractors? How about personnel files from our own intelligence services?
The answer to those questions is unfavorably implied by the Obama Regime's reticence to provide candid answers:
The Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department have declined to publicly identify which database in the business center was targeted in the breach disclosed Thursday, one of the largest intrusions into federal employees’ personal information. But experts in and out of government in technology and federal personnel systems say they strongly suspect that a central database hosted by the Interior Business Center containing all executive branch personnel information, called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, was targeted.
The database contains a trove of data on every civilian employee in the government that goes way beyond their Social Security numbers. It’s a compendium of personnel files containing thirty-five years of historical data on federal employees. The records track an employee’s career in the government, from salary to benefits to training and certification. They also connect to other federal data sources on employees, including sites containing former employees’ retirement status and benefits.
That would include their family members as well, just in case you were looking for some solace or hiding place. Which could make ChiComm spies of even the most honest, loyal, and patriotic of Americans.
And just in case you thought that maybe, just maybe, this mother of all hacks was just for espionage purposes, it is now suspected that another ChiComm goal is to build a master database of the American citizenry even more gargantuan than the one the Obama Regime itself is compiling:
China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health-care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say....
“They’re definitely going after quite a bit of personnel information,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer of ThreatConnect, a Northern Virginia cybersecurity firm. “We suspect they’re using it to understand more about who to target [for espionage], whether electronically or via human recruitment.”
You know what I think they're doing? Getting a head start on processing all their new subjects after Red China conquers the United States. They'll save a lot of time that way.
Call it "non-oxymoronic bureaucratic efficiency".
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