"I'll have more leeway after the election.
Oh, and Death to America!"
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
Maybe the Chinese can release Obama’s birth certificate ??
And maybe his draft card?
5.56mm
"I'll have more leeway after the election.
Oh, and Death to America!"
“It’s almost as if the Obama administration is deliberately giving away our national security to our enemies.”
Almost is an understatement, it’s by design.
Rest assured, many in the Obama regime are selling and giving away national secrets. Bo promised hope and change but has delivered hate, theft, racism, and murder.
1. Hundreds of millions of Constitutional violations against innocent Americans every day. Dragnet e-surveillance, biometrics, predictive analysis, social media "known associates" analysis, GPS tracking, Amazon order histories etc., no limits. Everything. Stored forever. Bluffdale & others.
2. Inabaility to protect even their own data. Every day we hear about another usgov hack attack. What never makes the news are more numerous and more severe.
The immediate questions are why news embarrassing to usgov being released? Why now? We know new laws eliminating even more of our Freedoms are in the works, laws defeating or outlawing encryption, privacy, and relative Internet anonymity are all coming down the pike. That should be a clue. Just a little...nudge...to make things happen.
Yep. Great way to find potential insider spies. Should be obvious to just about everybody that the US government has become dysfunctional. Simply looking at our federal debt levels should tell everyone that. It is imploding right before our eyes. Stuck in the debt quicksand, flailing about and only making its predicament worse. Just like the old Soviet Union. The breakup is coming.
“Those words do sound like they are straight out of the mouth of the prince of this world, do they not.”
They do, and are.
“Just why are those records accessible via the Internet, anyway?”
That is something that has always puzzled me.
FIXED!
. . . the obama white house blames george w. bush in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
I wonder if (and would anticipate) they also got everyone’s performance appraisals? They are part of an individual’s personnel records.
Security clearance applications would provide a lot of hooks into individuals, and expose most intelligence personnel.
Performance appraisals however, will provide detailed information on what every element of the government is doing, exactly how far along they are, and what their priorities are. They are strategic intelligence in themselves, not just a vulnerability to future compromises.
Maybe 1985 is the time that they made the conversion from paper to computer records and the older ones got shredded. The government also has a bad pattern of switching IT systems and a lot of things get lost in the data migration.
Almost as secure as keeping all your money in a cardboard box and setting it out on your porch. This Government is as secure as a 7-11
Does anyone know how many years/far back this breech goes?
I know people in my company are getting the letters for checks 5 years ago.
Thanks.
I have read here and heard elsewhere, that it goes back to 1985. That was when the government went from paper files to computer.
Frankly, I don't think Obama gives a sh!t about the latter. He hasn't said nary a word about it - and neither has the incompetent and twisted Federal Leviatan, including the incompetent jerks at OPM. But Obama would do anything to protect the former information - and his own little 1/8 black, 3/8 Muslim Arab, and 1/2 lily white a$$!!
Did they get John Kerry’s SF-86?
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