The US Office of Personnel Management today confirmed a major security breach in which some four million federal employees had their personal information taken, in what is believe to be the biggest single breach of government computer networks in history.
The loss of the database is another major blow for the administration’s focus on cybersecurity, and the FBI says they’re still looking into the why and the how of the breach, suggesting that even though they’ve known about the breach since April there is precious little they’ve figured out yet about what happened.
That’s no reason not to recklessly throw around blame, however, and official speculation that China could conceivably be the culprit, based seemingly entirely on the notion that China would like the sort of data that was lost, has fed on itself to the point that top Congressional officials are claiming certitude that China was to blame.
There is no publicly available evidence that China is involved at all, however. Some media outlets are claiming Congressional comments as the source, and some Congressmen are claiming media reports. The fact that the employees are being warned to monitor their credit reports, however, suggests that they have not ruled out the possibility this was private hackers stealing financial information for the sake of identity theft.
These morons can't keep their own info safe, they don't know how anthrax is escaping their labs, yet the American people are supposed to trust them with all their life-info obtained illegally?
Oh, they know how it "escaped the labs"…it was FEDEX. The problem is they – and I find this really hard to believe – haven't learned how to kill it first. They know how to kill most everything else, so I just chalk it up to incompetence…again.
I don't believe a damn thing this corrupt regime says. I wouldn't be surprised if the
USG itself wasn't the culprit behind this so-called data breach.
The inmates are in control of the asylum.
I guess you could look at the NSA's Utah mega-puter as just one-stop-shopping for any kind of hacker in the world.
The US has been making the argument that industrial espionage (the kind that China is usually blamed for) is evil and unacceptable, but that spying on foreign governments (the kind that the US routinely conducts) is a perfectly legitimate and necessary undertaking by any responsible state.
The Office of Personnel Management is not a commercial entity and has no trade secrets; it is a bonafide government agency.
If the Chinese are indeed the culprit for this attack, shouldn't the administration be heaping praise on them for finally "playing by the rules", as our president is fond of saying whenever he lectures the Chinese in public? What's the problem?
When I heard about this last evening on NBC, that old shrew Mitchell read the script with feeling that it was the Chinese without a doubt. Not even a hint of doubt. I wonder if she'll bother to walk it back when it is more evident that it was not the Chinese. I'm not saying it was or wasn't. I don't know but I probably know just as much as the boobs at NBC.
I was just surprised they didn't blame it on Putin. I'd be more inclined to blame it on the Israelis. But that's just this old Curmudgeon's opinion…
It was Putin disguised as the Chinese!
Actually it was East Slobovian separatists backed by North Krumpistan. Looks like an AmeriKan armada will now be launched soon to provide yet another diversion for….
I think the thing was made up from whole cloth in an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon, for the express purpose of eclipsing/excusing the latest Edward Snowden disclosure — that the NSA's illegal Internet spying operations were, at some point, expanded for the alleged purpose of combating this exact kind of cyber attack.
"…expanded for the alleged purpose of combating this exact kind of cyber attack."
Not working out too well, are they – at least they're keeping their track record intact. Perhaps they think this kind of attack is just going to go away, My bank has changed out my credit/debit card twice in the past year because the supermarket I used to go to (emphasize used to) had their systems hacked twice. When I queried the local management, they assured me that after the first event corporate upgraded their systems to prevent another. The second hack occurred 6 months later…the manager doesn't talk to me anymore.
Well, no, it isn't working out too well. It never does. The whole basis of government's power grabs is "you gave us power, we messed everything up … so you should give us MORE power." That doesn't make any sense, but they do it anyway.
Obviously it was Osama bin Laden. Oh wait, he's dead … or maybe not since there was no funeral and no corpus to bury facing Mecca. Who really knows; his four wives or his many children or perhaps his barber?
Like China, Russia, North Korea, and all other such nations have nothing better to do with their time and resources than to spend it hacking the US infrastructure.
Of course this couldn't be Israeli Mossad who has been found to have numerous spying operations inside the United States or Saudi Arabian Secret Services both of which serve nations that just enjoy blowing things up and causing all sorts of mayhem in the world…
I heard a report yesterday on the radio about this massive hack job, and they were claiming that China was [probably responsible – but, then, they said something really strange. The guy reading the story on the radio said that the US Government is not going to release the information that proves China really did it and that the identity of the hackers will remain undisclosed to the public.
Say what? The first thing I thought when I heard that statement – was that the identity of the nation who did the hacking had to be Israel, and as usual, the treasonous rats in our government and in our Congress and White House are, once again, complicit in covering up another instance of Israeli treachery against the United States and its people.
BTW: Remember, just a few years ago, where half a dozen or so nations in Europe discovered that the Israeli Mossad had been engaging in identity theft operations, so they could harvest personal information from the citizens of their nations in order to create fake identities and obtain passports that allowed Israel to insert their agents into these countries, whereby they would have an easier time committing espionage and setting up false flag terrorist events?