Posted on 06/12/2015 8:18:27 PM PDT by kristinn
Hackers have breached a database containing a wealth of sensitive information from federal employees’ security background checks, the Obama administration said Friday — news that experts say could deal a devastating blow to U.S. intelligence gathering.
The revelations came just a week after officials disclosed a previous massive cyber intrusion into the same federal personnel office, compromising records of more than 4 million current and past employees in a breach that administration officials have privately blamed on Chinese hackers.
The stolen records in the hack disclosed Friday included data on intelligence and military personnel, The Associated Press reported. A senior administration official would not confirm that information but confirmed that the breach occurred at the Office of Personnel Management.
The hackers are believed to have obtained data from a security intake form known as a Standard Form-86, which includes details such as financial trouble, past convictions, drug use and close relationships with citizens of other countries. The form is used for background checks of current, former and prospective federal employees.
“This is crown jewels material … a gold mine for a foreign intelligence service,” said Joel Brenner, a former NSA senior counsel.
The SF-86 breach could have dire consequences for U.S. intelligence gathering, former officials said, noting that it would make it extremely difficult for anyone inside the database to ever work in a covert capacity. For example, that would include someone employed by the State or Agriculture departments who gathers intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency. “This is not the end of American human intelligence, but it’s a significant blow,” Brenner said.
As of October, 4.5 million Americans were cleared for access to classified information, including approximately a million contractors.
And because the SF-86s are stored in an indexed database, that database could also be combed for secrets, said Robert Caruso, a former Navy special security officer who has worked in security at the State and Defense departments. For example, Chinese agents could search the database for instances when agents with NSA covers were in the same place at the same time and make reasonable deductions about what they were doing there.
Brenner and Caruso both said it’s likely that clearance forms from the Defense Department and its related intelligence agencies, including NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, could be accessed through OPM. It’s much less likely that CIA employee clearance information was accessed that way because the CIA has traditionally insisted on managing its own personnel information.
“CIA refuses to put its people’s information in with OPM, and of course they’re right,” Brenner said. One lesson to draw from the breach, he said, is that “any serious clandestine agency has to be in charge of its own personnel information. Full stop.”
Investigators became aware of this second breach of the OPM’s systems as they pursued a previously disclosed breach into an unencrypted system holding personnel files of as many as 4.2 million current and past federal employees. That information included Social Security numbers, as well as names, addresses, pay grades, personnel actions and pension, insurance and health plan details.
The administration official said the relevant federal agencies received notification of the latest hack on Monday. “We expect OPM will conduct additional notifications as necessary,” the official said in a statement.
SNIP
“There’s so many strange coincidences surrounding him, huh?”
Might never have been a hack. Might just be a cover story for the admin using sensitive info to blackmail employees/military into supporting additional unconstitutional actions.
When will someone hack into Obama’s secret personal documents?
I still haven’t seen a statement from Obama’s much-heralded InfoSec Czar.
At this point what differences does it make
Not true. They aren't giving it away, they are selling it to the highest bidder.
All this mention of 'hackers' is just a distraction to keep us from the truth.
I think he is exerting all of his efforts at making patient data in Obamacare secure.
Well, that makes me feel better now.
Might as well mail them our health records and save them the trouble.
All about power to them. In 1984, Orwell had O’Brien speak everything that the socialists refused to say:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others. We are interested solely in power, not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
Those words do sound like they are straight out of the mouth of the prince of this world, do they not. But that is basically what the left is and always has been.
29 posted on Thursday, June 11, 2015 7:03:23 PM by Olog-hai
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3299355/posts
Nothing yet about “congress caused this by funding cuts to Homeland Security, Cyber-Division”?
Geez, this makes Maddy Albright’s lost laptop (announced to the world before it could be wiped and sold cheap) look like amateur hour.
Sure would not want to be a US spy overseas right now. You should recall them all for their safety.
Obama is a federal employee. Did they find reference to any bath houses? What about his social security number? or maybe his birth certificate?
My guess is they are after our assets in foreign countries. As far as domestically, they can just nuke every city here anytime they want. Obama stopped missile defense. That is why he was put there.
The Chinese and the Russians now know everyone in the US who holds a security clearance. I bet that Snowden told them how to get into our systems in exchange for protection in Russia.
I have a new term for them : Hastertites
Made me think of that whole Valerie Plame fiasco and what a huge deal that purportedly was. Who's going to jail this time?
Is there any reason to think that Hastert was being blackmailed, and if so/if not was there any reason for him being outed at this time?
Obunga immediately issued an EO sealing any access to his past, who knows how tight this seal is, and what databases are included? Wiping the electronic records would not be beyond the creep, and within the capability of the NSA.
AND the FBI, IRS, Military Security, NSA, CIA, all OWNED by Obama and minions.. are in the dark?..
Maybe they ARE THE DARK...
Recruiting new spies via black mail or monetary inducements will be easy pickings!
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