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The prolonged hacking into the White House Office of Personnel Management, which put the personal information of at least some 21.5 million past and current federal employees in jeopardy, is only the beginning of the security threat to the Obama Administration and its successors, a number of top-level experts in cybersecurity have told Fox News. The attack has been frequently sourced as coming from China. The experts warned that the entire U.S. national security clearance system could be compromised, that future senior government leaders and advisors could be targeted even before taking office, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of government officials...

John Boozman says breaches targeted ‘most sensitive information’Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) said personal information on the Navy’s most elite special operations team could be in the hands of America’s adversaries following the cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Boozman told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that the attacks, suspected to have originated from China, targeted the “most sensitive information we have.” “The breach there was really staggering, this magnitude some of the most sensitive information,” Boozman said. “A lot of people when you fill out a form to get a top security...

He promised us the most transparent administration in history. And he delivered. Combined with the 4.2 million people whose Social Security numbers were stolen in a separate breach, we’re now talking about upwards of eight percent of the entire population whose sensitive personal data is in an enemy power’s hands. On that note, let me gently remind you that not a single person has been fired for any of this. Of the 21.5 million records that were stolen, 19.7 million belonged to individuals who had undergone background investigation, OPM said. The remaining 1.8 million records belonged to other individuals, mostly...

The head of the U.S. government's personnel office is rejecting bipartisan calls for her resignation following revelations that hackers stole the personal information of more than 21 million people on her watch. Katherine Archuleta, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, said she has no plans to step down and is committed to continuing her work. The White House, which had previously said President Barack Obama was confident in Archuleta's leadership, said there was no change in its position. The escalating calls for Archuleta to be replaced came as the Obama administration disclosed on Thursday that the number of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the government's personnel office has resigned in the wake of a massive data breach on her watch. A White House official says President Barack Obama accepted the resignation of Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta on Friday morning. She'll stay on the job through the end of the day. The official says deputy director Beth Cobert will become acting director starting Saturday.

Katherine Archuleta, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, will resign effective Friday, according to a White House official, one day after it was revealed that sweeping cyberintrusions at the agency resulted in the theft of the personal information of more than 22 million people. Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” the official said. The president accepted her resignation.

The federal personnel agency will announce Thursday that a breach of OPM data revealed the information of 21.5 million federal employees and their families. More than 21 million Social Security numbers were compromised in a breach that affected a database of sensitive information on federal employees held by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency announced Thursday. That number is in addition to the 4.2 million social security numbers that were compromised in another data breach at OPM that was made public in June. The second data breach, which officials have privately linked to China, affected 21.5 million federal employees...

More than 21 million Social Security numbers were compromised in a breach that affected a database of sensitive information on federal employees held by the Office of Personnel Management, the agency announced Thursday.

The Office of Personnel Management has decided to take a step back in an attempt to move forward after hackers breached files containing sensitive data on millions of current and former federal employees, but some stakeholders are not fully on board with the plan. The agency sent an advisory last week to federal offices instructing them to temporarily collect paper copies of employees’ background investigation forms, rather than processing them electronically. OPM reached that decision after it shut down e-QIP, the Web tool that tracks employee background investigations, due to vulnerabilities that led to a breach of the personal information...

Three weeks after U.S. authorities determined foreign hackers may have stolen sensitive government records tied to tens of millions of people, the Office of Personnel Management has now shut down a system tied to the breach, essentially bringing to a halt the way federal agencies have conducted background checks for years. According to an "alert" posted on OPM's website today, the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing system -- or “e-QIP” -- "will be down for an extended period of time for security enhancements.” In a subsequent news release, OPM called it a "temporary suspension" that "will ensure our network is...

The National Archives and Records Administration recently detected unauthorized activity on three desktops indicative of the same hack that extracted sensitive details on millions of current and former federal employees, government officials said Monday. The revelation suggests the breadth of one of the most damaging cyber assaults known is wider than officials have disclosed. The National Archives' own intrusion-prevention technology successfully spotted the so-called indicators of compromise during a scan this spring, said a source involved in the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident. The discovery was made soon after the Department of Homeland Security's...

It gets worse: ​Federal OPM hack affected up to 18 million In addition to current and former employees, it appears the records of people who had applied for government jobs were also revealed. The more we find out about the OPM hack, the worse it looks. CNN is reporting that the personal data of 18 million current, former, and prospective federal employees was stolen in the cyberattack that targeted the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack. FBI Director James Comey reportedly gave the 18 million estimate in a closed-door Senate briefing not long after the breach. In addition to current...

A friend just got a letter from the United States Office of Personnel Management indicating his personal information may have been compromised. He hasn't worked for the Federal government since about 1985. This seems to indicate they may have gotten almost everything on everyone. The letter also offers some kind of protection in case of identity theft.

<p>The technical details are a little difficult here so let’s put it this way – idiotic and utterly incompetent government officials outsourced IT management of highly sensitive information to companies that had some workers in China, and gave them complete and total access to that database.</p>

<p>The House Oversight Committee’s hearings on the massive OPM data breach have been absolutely astounding. The rank incompetence on display at this agency was mind-boggling...</p>

The Office of Personnel Management will notify many more individuals their personal information was compromised than the 4.2 million current and former federal employees the agency initially informed, officials said on Tuesday. The timing of the second round of notifications, as well as the number of employees who will receive them, is still unknown by OPM. The agency’s director, Katherine Archuleta, confirmed to a congressional panel that OPM discovered, in the course of looking into the initial hack it uncovered in April, a second hack that targeted background investigation and security clearance data. Archuleta said it will notify the those...

An Office of Personnel Management investigative official said Tuesday the agency entrusted with millions of personnel records has a history of failing to meet basic computer network security requirements.Michael Esser, assistant inspector general for audit, said in testimony prepared for delivery that for years many of the people running the agency's information technology had no IT background.

A second major cyber breach that might reveal far more personal and damaging information appears to have hit the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The breach was apparently carried out by hackers with connections to China and targeted a database containing copies of the government's Standard Form 86, according to news reports citing unnamed government officials. The form, available online, is a 120-page questionnaire that's answered by people seeking a national security clearance.

The first reports of the massive penetration of Office of Personnel Management files and security clearance applications — apparently by Chinese hackers most likely working for, or with, that country’s military intelligence apparatus — included grumbles from the affected employees that the administration didn’t handle the situation very well. Those early grumbles were but the snap responses of a few individual employees the media chose at random. Now that the millions of people potentially affected by the hack have been given a few days to digest the news and consider the Administration’s response, their attitude has soured into what government...

Only a week after Russian "crime syndicates" hacked the IRS database and stole information on the tax returns of more than 100,000 people, China was blamed for "one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen," the Wall Street Journal reports. The data breach allowed Chinese hackers to steal the personal records of about four million people — all either government employees, contractors, or their families. The cyber-attack by Russian hackers is not the first of its kind. The New American reported last year that Russian hackers broke into networks at the White House, and in a separate cyber-attack...