China suspected in
massive breach of federal computers
Insanity:
doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Before we take this
journey into a posting about computer Hacking let us remember the years that
this government shunned USA Citizens well qualified for college in favor of
students from other countries because their parents were throwing money at our
universities and politicians.
I am speaking for
well over 40 years!
Remember, I worked
in service 40 years 5, 10, and sometimes more customers a day average and have
heard the cries from our countries parents and young adults shut out of college
because of a yearly quota of foreign student that must be filled in every year!
Even today only the
children of the 1 to 5% and/or politicians can afford to go to our colleges and
this congress is still taking any help still on the books from you every year!
ALSO!
Because we have been
buying products from countries like China, making cheep knock offs for those
forty plus years countries are no longer 3rd world.
I watch our citizens
for years while shopping pick up a product like for instance 'garden hose,'
feel the quality, look at a piece of junk 'Made in China' put the good hose
down for lack of a dollar or so and head to the cashier with the piece of junk
from China only to be doing the same thing again in a couple of years?
Insanity:
Now those same
students are sending their children and grand children to our colleges learning
how to hack into our computers and get our information for free to be able to
steal more of our knowledge!
And yet we still buy
their garbage?
Insanity:
doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
KEN DILANIAN and
RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press WASHINGTON
China- based hackers
are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. government
personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million
federal workers, American officials said Thursday.
The Department of
Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel
Management and the Interior Department had been compromised.
“The FBI is
conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the
statement said.
The hackers were
believed to be based in China, said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.
Collins, a member of
the Senate intelligence committee, said the breach was “yet another indication
of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data
that would identify people with security clearances.”
A U.S. official, who
declined to be named because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the data
breach, said it could potentially affect
every federal agency.
One key question is whether intelligence agency employee information was
stolen. Former government employees are affected as well.
“This is an attack
against the nation,” said Ken Ammon, chief strategy officer of Xceedium, who
said the attack fit the pattern of those carried out by nation states for the
purpose of espionage. The information stolen could be used to impersonate or
blackmail federal employees with access to sensitive information, he said.
The Office of Personnel
Management is the human resources department for the federal government, and it
conducts background checks for security clearances. The OPM conducts more than
90 percent of federal background investigations, according to its website.
The agency said it is
offering credit monitoring and identity theft insurance for 18 months to
individuals potentially affected. The National Treasury Employees Union, which
represents workers in 31 federal agencies, said it is encouraging members to
sign up for the monitoring as soon as possible.
In November, a former
DHS contractor disclosed another cyberbreach that compromised the private files
of more than 25,000 DHS workers and thousands of other federal employees.
Cyber-security experts
also noted that the OPM was targeted a year ago in a cyber-attack that was
suspected of originating in China. In that case, authorities reported no
personal information was stolen.
One expert said it’s
possible that hackers could use information from government personnel files for
financial gain. In a recent case disclosed by the IRS, hackers appear to have
obtained tax return information by posing as taxpayers, using personal information
gleaned from previous commercial breaches, said Rick Holland, an information
security analyst at Forrester Research.
“Given what OPM does
around security clearances, and the level of detail they acquire when doing
these investigations, both on the subjects of the investigations and their
contacts and references, it would be a vast amount of information,” Holland
added.
