The US Government's Office of Personnel Management had their computer system systematically penetrated by the Chinese. This is the agency that clears federal government employees before they are hired - this data includes all security clearances.
First - from Government Executive:
Amid Calls for Firing, OPM Director 'More Committed Than Ever'
The embattled director of the Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday took issue with press reports that the controversial data breach affected four times as many employees than previously disclosed, defending her agency’s long-term response to the breach and use of contracts against criticism from lawmakers and her inspector general.
Are you serious? OPM did not discover the breach until a third-party security vendor was demonstrating its software and discovered the breach. Much more at the site.
Second - from FOX News:
White House reportedly hid extent of Office of Personnel Management hack
The Obama administration reportedly concealed the true amount of information compromised by a cyberattack on the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for several days after the initial disclosure of the hack, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the day after the White House admitted that hackers had breached personnel files, OPM publicly denied that the security clearance forms had been compromised despite receiving information to the contrary from the FBI. The administration did not say that security clearance forms had likely been accessed by the intruders until more than a week had passed.
A OPM spokeswoman denied the claims, telling the Journal the agency had been "completely consistent" in its reporting of the data breach.
Of course not - the Obama administration is all about growing a large centralized government. It doesn't like anything that points out the dangers of a large centralized government.
Third - from Hot Air:
Extortion bonanza: OPM hack exposed “intimate details” of cleared personnel
During his long tenure as FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover amassed a huge collection of information on American politicians, government employees, activists, and anyone else he deemed important enough to probe. Hoover wielded those dossiers to prolong his grip on power, impact public policy, and distort American politics for decades. That information remained tightly controlled, used only when Hoover thought it would benefit his agenda. When he died, his longtime personal secretary Helen Gandy destroyed most of those records before anyone else could get their hands on it.
Now imagine what would have happened had Gandy sent the files to China. That’s pretty much the equivalent of the damage done by the OPM hack, as The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris reports today. The hack exposed the “adjudication information” from security clearance investigations — the raw data on embarrassing personal details that goes way beyond the SF-86s already known to have been exposed:
A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers’ haul: information about workers’ sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity.
Those details, which are now presumed to be in the hands of Chinese spies, are found in the so-called “adjudication information” that U.S. investigators compile on government employees and contractors who are applying for security clearances. The exposure suggests that the massive computer breach at the Office of Personnel Management is more significant and potentially damaging to national security than officials have previously said.
Three former U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the adjudication information would effectively provide dossiers on current and former government employees, as well as contractors. It gives foreign intelligence agencies a roadmap for finding people with access to the government’s most highly classified secrets.
Obama administration officials had previously acknowledged the breach of information that applicants voluntarily disclose on a routine questionnaire, called Standard Form 86, but the theft of the more detailed and wide-ranging adjudication information appears to have gone overlooked.
This information didn’t come out initially, which is why it got “overlooked.” The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday afternoon that the lack of transparency on the hack resulted from a deliberate policy of obfuscation. The Obama administration decided to play this as two distinct hacks rather than one overall effort, a strategy that allowed the White House to hide the worst aspects of the stunning defeat.
How many more hacks like this do we have to have before we get some adults in the room. This is absurd. We are being managed by morons.
