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posted by martyb on Monday June 15 2015, @02:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the hiring-spree-commences-in-3...2...1... dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 15 2015, @11:34AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2015, @11:34AM (#196435)

    I would consider it a kind gesture and overture of friendship if the Chinese people would share that database with the American people.

    The problem is there seems no way to share it with the people without sharing it to our evil overlords.

    And our evil overlords would be thrilled to discover that VLM had a clearance in the mid 90s in the .mil and somehow by some miracle I'm not in the list so go hire VLM because he's clean.

    So the only way we're gonna see a list is if perhaps 1% of all data is removed before release, and then intensive observation is set up on the 1% who were removed. So if I'm not on the list they'll never hire me for a secure job because they'll know the Chinese are all over me.

    So between the two alternatives either I'd have a bright employment outlook or a rather dim one.

    There is another thing interesting to think about, is in the early 90s I was just a kid and thought $4/hr would be fantastic pay and my $500 car was perhaps my greatest asset etc etc. So if the Chinese took that data and offered me, say, a $8 coffee at starbucks or the amazing upgrade to a $1000 car, they'd be in for a rather rude surprise. Likewise I'm sure there's at least some dudes in the 90s who failed to clear because they loved dudes, and at that time there were a lot of problems with that, so imagine some dumb foreign agent in 2016 trying to blackmail some dude from the 90s, not understanding that the times have changed and the dude loving dude is now happily married to his husband and has a blog about it and all that stuff, sure Chinese dude I'll call your bluff go tell everyone, LOL.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @02:20PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday June 15 2015, @02:20PM (#196495) Journal

    The data was taken from the evil overlords, so presumably they have copies already. Between the Chinese, evil overlords, and the American people the only party that doesn't have a copy is the last.

    There are many other ways for Americans to crowdsource intelligence on the criminal gang in DC, but if the Chinese people were to hand us the dossiers outright they'd be doing us a real solid. It could be the basis for peace in the 21st century.

    I'm not sure exactly what you meant about employment, but not working for the government is a good thing. That is a place where souls and skills go to die.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 15 2015, @02:39PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 15 2015, @02:39PM (#196505)

      I'm not sure exactly what you meant about employment

      Nobody knows for certain if its a complete list. Knowing for certain that your opponent is wrong is valuable and can be taken advantage of.

      B stole a pile of data from A, but they don't know if its all there is, or if any of it is true, and A has nothing to gain by admitting anything. So I'm not sure A can take any employment action against J. Random Citizen based on the data released from B without making certain admissions about the quality of B's data in general. They kinda have to pretend it never happened.