A major federal government employee union is charging that a recent hacking attack blamed on China was much larger than originally indicated, alleging that data on every current and former workers in the "Central Personnel Data File" was compromised.
"We believe that hackers have every affected person's Social Security number(s), military records and veterans' status information, address, birth date, job history , health insurance, life insurance, and pension information; age, gender, race and more," wrote J. David Cox, Sr., the head of the American Federation of Government Employees.
"Worst, we believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous," Cox added in a letter to the director of the Office of Personnel Management, whose computer systems were targeted.
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Credit: Jamie Dupree
There was no immediate reply from OPM, which has not put out any substantive public information about the hack since it was revealed last week.
The union letter emerged along with new reports about the extent of the hack; ABC news reported on Thursday that hackers may have been going through government databases run by OPM for more than a year - without being detected.
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