Hackers leak data of thousands of US government workers online. Sensitive data of workers in the US have been stolen by unnamed hackers, the government agency has now confirmed.
Hackers Leak Data US Government Workers
The US Transportation Department (USDOT) has just been hit by a cyberattack that got to see much data on both current and former employees stolen.
In a report by Reuters, citing “sources briefed on the matter”, revealed that the incident affected a total of 237,000 people of which 114,000 are current USDOT employees, while 123,000 on the other hand are former ones.
The agency as you should know which is in charge of handling the US transportation system, has now notified Congress of the breach through an email seen by Reuters, which stated that the breach was “isolated […] to certain systems at the department used for administrative functions, such as employee transit benefits processing.”
Safety Systems Are Unaffected By the Breach
The systems that are referenced in the email process TRANServe transit benefits that reimburse employees of the government for some commuting costs, it was stated.
The announcement in question does not discuss which of the data was taken, if there is ever enough to run identity theft attacks, or if any form of payment information was compromised. The organization however also did not discuss if the data was already used in the wild for various forms of criminal purposes. Transportation safety systems were however unaffected by the breach, USDOT added, and it claims that it doesn’t know which threat actor was behind the reported breach.
The Incident Is Still Under Investigation
The incident is at the moment being investigated, and the organization has now frozen access to the transit benefit system until it’s deemed safe to use again. And as per the report by Reuters, the maximum benefit allowance in question is $280 per month, for federal employee mass transit commuting costs.
Government agencies, as well as their staff, are a constant target as cybercriminals, both state-sponsored and profit motivated, all seek for vulnerabilities to exploit as well as sensitive data to steal.
Employee information can either be utilized in running even more devastating attacks, or it can even be sold on the dark web for profit making.
The US Government and Its Concerns for National Security
The US government banned the TikTok app from agency-issued mobile devices just recently, citing reasons for matters of national security.
The country is also planning to use its RESTRICT act to ban TikTok from even more users, again, simply on the grounds of online safety.
This development however follows a recent report which found tracking pixels all belonging to TikTok across many websites and this is including US government pages. An while tracking pixels or web beacons for that matter are typically used in collecting data to better target audiences with relevant ads, concerns have now been raised in regards to the information that is collected and just how it may be used by the Chinese company and other organizations and entities in the country.
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