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 its 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 its 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. Its 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 peoples information in with OPM, and of course theyre 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 OPMs 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
Why would it only go back to 1985? The government has been granting security clearances in one form or another since time out of mind.
This information will be used to plant spies. China will send over people to assume identities and gain access to anyplace we’ve been successful in keeping them out. Certainly sensitive military jobs.
The president and vice president, alone among all government officials, military and contractors, do not have to submit to a security clearance and background check, as they are the grantors of access. It’s possible that Joe Biden went through one during his long service in the congress, but I rather doubt that Barack Obama did. Convenient, no? When I was in, President Carter revealed some code words and other secrets during a public interview. Did he get in trouble? Not at all, those things were immediately considered “declassified” since he had said them.
Great. Now the Chicoms know I banged the police chiefs daughter and sent his cop son to get in a fight with me back in 1988.
Hehehe. I was smarter. It was the ministers daughter. They are more fun. You know the saying about the ministers daughter and the sherifs son is all too true.
But Obama was a senator. Do they have to get security a security clearance?
Was the onfo hacked by Hillary or by those wanting the goods on those around Hillary?
That was my thought as well.
I’m not sure but I thought individual agencies did their own background checks at one time and that the task was “consolidated” later under OPM.
The article states that CIA has always done their own...
Inside job. You cannot trust government with data.
Or if you’re the bad guys, target their families and turn em.
That's what I'm talking about. Raw, honed, all edges and eyes with a gleam so dark people refuse to look at it. It has no time for silly assed talk of possibilities and who blackmailed who; it swallows the stupid in tower sized gulps.
Power. It takes time to put it together but once you own the past you shape the future. People fade in its shadow.
Thanks for that reminder
It doesn’t matter who does the background check. OPM has the job information.
Hillarys server got hacked, and that opened a way into the bowels of the secure state department servers (imho). All it would take is one of those, I found this cool video attachments sent from a spoof of Hillarys email, and someone in state opens it, thinking it came from her thighness. Boom. Trojan implanted into state server. From there, it is childs play for the kind of hackers the Chinese and Russians employ.
Actually, the whole thing would be childs play for probably 1000+ hackers around the world. Guccifer was just screwing with them at their expenseand still has 30 gigabytes stashed in the cloud. He was not even malicious.
Guarantee the espionage guys were there too, only they planted stuff all over the fedguv servers. Theyve been there for years. Our entire fedgov secret server system has very likely been hacked. And every employee compromisedwe already know that. This is not hyperbole. It is that bad. And Hillarys ego did it.
Just who in the Federal Govt is being paid a very high salary and perks to make sure that this doesn’t happen? What do they have to say for themselves? Did they do this on purpose?
No one. It is all contracted out to the best connected inside the beltway support service contractors.
“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, drunkenness and close relationships with citizens of other countries.”
NOW can we lock up Hillary?!?!
Fire them...get taxpayers a refund from the apparently incompetent consultant cretins.
Don't let a good crisis go to waste ... take as many of them with you as you can. Leave this world as a hero to many of us ...
Gee Wiz! I wonder who is in charge of the administration of the Federal Government? Isn’t it customary that the head of the organization resigns when there is a failure on HIS watch?
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