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A hack announced last week affected all current and retired federal employees, and hackers got their hands on much more personal information than previously announced, the American Federation of Government Employees said Thursday.A December breach of government systems containing personal information of millions of federal employees was worse than originally thought. A union of federal workers said Thursday that the attack, announced last week, had stolen confidential information of every single federal employee, past or present -- far more than was previously revealed. The government disputes those claims. It's the latest in a spree of damaging hacks against the government,...

Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, charging that the cyberattack on U.S. employee data is far worse than the Obama administration has acknowledged. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor that the December hack into Office of Personnel Management data was carried out by "the Chinese."

Those of us who have had security clearances in the past endured plenty of lectures on the need to secure sensitive material. The Office of Personnel Management in the Obama administration apparently needed to listen a little more carefully. A hack by China’s intelligence service not only exposed four million current federal employees, but also thirty years of data from security clearances, with the most personally sensitive information possible now exposed to foreign spies:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Data stolen from U.S. government computers by suspected Chinese hackers included security clearance information and background checks dating back three decades, U.S. officials said on Friday,...

Chinese hackers breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, officials said Thursday, and the agency will notify some 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data may have been compromised. The hack was the second major intrusion of the agency by China in less than a year. OPM, using new tools, discovered the breach in April, said officials at the agency who declined to comment on who was behind the hack. Other U.S. officials, who spoke on conditions of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation, identified the hackers as being from...

Hackers have struck one of the world's largest internet dating websites, leaking the highly sensitive sexual information of almost four million users onto the web. The stolen data reveals the sexual preferences of users, whether they're gay or straight, and even indicates which ones might be seeking extramarital affairs. In addition, the hackers have revealed email addresses, usernames, dates of birth, postal codes and unique internet addresses of users' computers. Channel 4 News has been investigating the cyber underworld, discovering which websites have been hacked and exposing the trade in personal information of millions of people through so-called "dark web"...

Thieves are stealing money from people's credit cards, bank and PayPal accounts -- by first tapping into their Starbucks mobile app. Starbucks (SBUX) on Wednesday acknowledged that criminals have been breaking into individual customer rewards accounts. The Starbucks app lets you pay at checkout with your phone. It can also reload Starbucks gift cards by automatically drawing funds from your bank account, credit card or PayPal. That's how criminals are siphoning money away from victims. They break into a victim's Starbucks account online, add a new gift card, transfer funds over -- and repeat the process every time the original...

A group of hackers affiliated with ISIS are threatening to carry out a cyber attack—dubbed “Message to America”—against a number of targets 2 p.m. EST today. The targets were not identified on ISIS forums and social channels but the hackers are promising something “surprising” that “will frighten America”.

If the U.S. intelligence community believes that Russia poses a greater cyber spying threat than China, what will it make of this? Russia and China signed a cyber-security deal on Friday, which experts say could firm up Russia’s ties with the east and may become a foundation for binding cyber security ties in the future. According to the text of the agreement posted on the Russian government’s website on Wednesday, Russia and China agree to not conduct cyber-attacks against each other, as well as jointly counteract technology that may “destabilize the internal political and socio-economic atmosphere,” ”disturb public order” or...

A former commander of U.S. nuclear forces is leading a call for taking U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles off high alert, arguing that keeping them less ready for prompt launch would reduce the risk of miscalculation in a crisis. It also could keep a possible cyberattack from starting a nuclear war, he said, although neither Washington nor Moscow appears interested in negotiating an agreement to end the practice of keeping nuclear missiles on high alert. Retired Gen. James Cartwright said in an interview that “de-alerting” nuclear arsenals could foil cyber intruders by reducing the chance of firing a weapon in...

The United States on Thursday disclosed a cyber intrusion this year by Russian hackers who accessed an unclassified U.S. military network, in a episode Defense Secretary Ash Carter said showed the growing threat and the improving U.S. ability to respond.

AVS WinVote machines used in three presidential elections in state ‘would get an F-minus’ in security, said computer scientist who pushed for decertification Touchscreen voting machines used in numerous elections between 2002 and 2014 used “abcde” and “admin” as passwords and could easily have been hacked from the parking lot outside the polling place, according to a state report. The AVS WinVote machines, used in three presidential elections in Virginia, “would get an F-minus” in security, according to a computer scientist at tech research group SRI International who had pushed for a formal inquiry by the state of Virginia for...

Evidence that Russian computer hackers penetrated security at the White House and State Department was brushed aside by National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh. “Since the Administration has no hostile designs on Russia we don’t consider their gaining access to confidential correspondence at the State Department or White House a threat to our security,” Stroh maintained. “In a way, this could be a good thing. They will see that we bear them no ill will. That could open up new avenues for better relations between our two countries.” “It would be far more worrisome if our correspondence had been illicitly...

Bad news today for HBO, which is attempting to marry the recent debut of their HBO Now streaming service with season 5 of Game of Thrones. As of last night, the first four episodes of the new season, nearly half of the ten total episodes, have been leaked online to various torrent sites. After appearing online yesterday afternoon, the episodes have already been downloaded almost 800,000 times, and that figure will likely blow past a million downloalds by the season 5 premier tonight.

Russian hackers last year were able to breach a White House computer system after a successful cyber-attack on the State Department, a news report said Tuesday. The report by CNN says the hackers were able to get sensitive information, including non-public details about President Obama’s schedule. White House officials responded by saying the attack last year was made public and that no classified information was compromised. And they declined to comment on CNN’s assertion that Russia was the culprit. …

CNN has made news with this headline: “How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House.” Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president’s schedule. While such information is not classified, it is still highly sensitive and...

Russian hackers who got into the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, U.S. officials say.

Cyber activist group Anonymous has released an internet video which threatens Israel with an “electronic Holocaust” on April 7, in a massive cyber attack planned to fall just over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 16, known in Israel as Yom HaShoah. The video shows a masked figure in a suit and tie delivering a prepared statement, warning that the group will eradicate Israel from cyberspace “for... crimes in the Palestinian territories”. “We will erase you from cyberspace in our electronic Holocaust,” says the video’s masked figure. "As we did many times, we will take down your servers,...

The body of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was not buried at sea, according to leaked emails of intelligence firm Stratfor, as revealed by WikiLeaks. Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says. The official version is that the body of Al-Qaeda’s top man, who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, was buried at an undisclosed location at sea in a proper Muslim ceremony. "If body dumped at...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department seeking any and all communications – including emails – from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00321)). This latest lawsuit will require the State Department to answer questions about and conduct thorough searches of Hillary Clinton’s newly discovered hidden email accounts. Judicial Watch also has nearly...

Two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian have been charged over roles in hacking email service providers in the United States in one of the largest reported data breaches in the nation's history, the Department of Justice said on Friday.