Congressional Report Details Massive OPM Hack

A multi-step hack at the federal Office of Personnel Management began in 2012, went on for years, and likely “exfiltrated” information pertaining to millions of background checks and more than 4 million personnel records, according to a report issued last week by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report did not name a foreign perpetrator, but did link the breach to hacker groups which, according to some security consultants, have ties to China. The report concluded that the “intelligence and counterintelligence value of the stolen background investigation information for a foreign nation cannot be overstated, nor will it ever be fully known.” OPM officials were faulted in the report for being asleep at the wheel with regard to cybersecurity and slow to react once evidence of a breach began to emerge. The House committee’s top Democrat took issue with report on the grounds that it downplayed evidence that hackers had used credentials garnered from private contractors.