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We had two submissions with updates concerning a US Government data breach.
A second round of hacks have been unleashed upon a vast range of already beleaguered U.S. federal government departments. The attacks again came from hackers linked to China, with the estimated figure upon personal data exposure this time running to about 14 million government employees across records dating back to the 1980s.
With each detailed personal file containing up to 780 identifying pieces of information, the breach constitutes one of the most intense computing blunders in governmental history. Though much can and has been said of the U.S. government's data collection abilities, their data protection skills clearly lack such polish.
Adam Chandler writes in The Atlantic that last week it was revealed that all of the data on Standard Form 86 — filled out by millions of current and former military and intelligence workers — is now believed to be in the hands of Chinese hackers. Form 86 requires that an applicant disclose everything from mental illnesses, financial interests, and bankruptcy issues to any brush with the law and major or minor drug and alcohol use. The application also requires a thorough listing of an applicant's family members, associates, or former roommates so hackers may have not only troves of personal data about Americans with highly sensitive jobs, but also the contacts or family members of American intelligence employees living abroad who could potentially be targeted for coercion.
At its worst, this cyberbreach also provides a basic roster of every American with a security clearance. "That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer," says Joel Brenner. "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."
Meanwhile the number of current and former federal employees compromised has ballooned from 4 million to as many as 14 million. The scope of the breach is remarkable, experts say, because the personnel office apparently learned little from earlier government data breaches like the WikiLeaks case and the surveillance revelations by Edward J. Snowden, both of which involved unencrypted data. "This is potentially devastating from a counterintelligence point of view," concludes Brenner.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
See our story on the earlier breach.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2015, @03:34AM
So funny. Could have happened to a more deserving group of assholes.
Yeah, maybe some of you reading this are Federal employees. Let me just add -- he he he he he. Stop following orders, quit, and become a moral member of society.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2015, @03:35AM
preview preview preview
... couldn't have happened ...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @03:41AM
> quit, and become a moral member of society.
So you want all the people with a conscience out of government, thus assuring that the reigns of power are held solely by people without a conscience?
You must be one of the later, just salivating at the thought of clearing out all those obstructionists.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2015, @05:23AM
If you don't want to be covered in shit, don't swim in the cess pool. The US Federal Government has gone past a certain level of corruption from which recovery is impossible. You can either choose to swim in the shit and be tainted by it, or do something else, but you aren't going to turn a cess pool into champagne by throwing in a few clean napkins. You're just going to get your napkins dirty.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @07:11AM
All that you have is words. No actions. No achievements. Not even character.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @11:07AM
Oh, but he has. All 110,187 of them, thanks to Unicode support in SN.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @10:46AM
That's why chipper talk about "working within the system to make it better" has gone from the naive, dewy-eyed sentiment it always was to fantastically absurd. It is not possible to patch a system this broken. The only thing you can do is wipe it and do a complete re-install.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arulatas on Monday June 15 2015, @05:18PM
What about those that did leave? Now their data is out.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:44AM
If you can't do the "time" (so to speak), don't do the crime.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @08:31AM
Gee, good thing I lied on all my answers to form 86. Oh, wait, on most of my answers, and I am not telling which ones! Maybe it was the sexual orientation or loyalty to he Mormon church, I forget. Well, I am just happy that now somebody knows!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2015, @01:52PM
I don't think that you understand what you are talking about. The SF-86 is used as the form for a background check for clearances. As an example, I used to work in a "clearance required" facility. The janitor had a clearance.
Many of the people who are federal employees are in the "normal employees, happen to work for the largest employer" category. Wal-mart employs something like 2M people, while the federal government employs ~4M. Like most companies, most jobs are fairly trivial: sorting letters, processing HR documents, janitorial services, operations/organization services, IT/technical support, contract negotiations, legal aid, secretarial services, production/testing, etc.
Your comment of "stop following orders, quit, and become a moral member of society" is somewhat misled. If you take a job as an Human Resources agent for Veterans Affairs, are you immoral? Health plan negotiations for the Post Office? Training coordinator for overseas language training in the Army? Public Affairs specialist for a military base? Humanitarian mission planner for the Navy? Nuclear inspector for the EPA? Stocking shelves at the on-base grocery store (commissary)?
TD;DR: not everyone in the federal Government works for the NSA. The majority of people have run-of-the-mill service jobs, and are now being targeted by foreign Governments through no fault of their own.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2015, @09:38AM
[1] Yes. You're part of the machine, thus tainted.
[2] Debatable, unless your loyalties lie with the insurance industry, in which case, Yes.
[3] Absolutely positively yes.
[4] Definitely certainly yes.
[5] Navy? Humanitarian? Definite yes because that person's job is to sugar coat the vast majority of the Navy's prime mission, which like the other military branches, is imperialism and random murder.
[6] Probably yes, especially when they look the other way and then take a cushy high paying job in the private sector as reward.
[7] Yes -- you're part of the death machine. Doesn't matter how small your part.
So let me reiterate -- ha ha ha ha ha. teehee.