Union: hackers get hold of personal data of all US civil servants

Hackers who broke into the computer systems of the federal agency, which is essentially the US government's human resources department, obtained the personal information of each employee, including Social Security numbers. The United States Government Employees Union announced this on Thursday.

“Hackers stole employee data, including the Social Security numbers of every government employee,” the Associated Press quoted from the statement. “We believe the Social Security numbers were not encrypted.” This breach of cybersecurity compliance is absolutely inexcusable and outrageous.” The union emphasized that the situation with the hacking of the computer system is “much worse than previously reported.”

The agency emphasizes that the criminals stole data “containing residential address, date of birth, previous places of employment and salary history, insurance numbers, as well as pension data.”

The US authorities sought to diminish the scale of hacking, saying that only a small amount of personal Information was made available to hackers.

As previously reported by The New York Times, the US authorities regularly collect information on all contacts between US government officials and citizens of other states. Cybercriminals allegedly received some of these materials.

It became known on June 30 that hackers managed to gain access to US government personnel data over the past 5 years. American officials then told reporters that “cybercriminals” had stolen “data that goes back (from the present) to 1985.” As the officials emphasized, “this means that they (the hackers) potentially have information (and) about retirees, they can find out what they did after leaving the government.”

According to investigators, the unauthorized entry into the data banks of the government personnel officers occurred in December last year. It is assumed that the result was access to personal information of about 4 million people, which was the largest such incident in the United States in recent years. Responsibility for this incident Washington put on hackers associated with the authorities of China. China has denied accusations of yet another cyber-attack on US government databases.