Federal hack yielded 30 years of worker information

The massive breach of security that gave someone, allegedly China, access to over 4 million US federal employee records didn’t just go broad. It went deep. Records span back as far as 30 years, giving the hackers access to many people who don’t even work for the government anymore.

As the government attempts to mitigate the situation by offering assistance to those who were victims of the hack, the intentions of the hackers remains unclear. Speculation of the worst case scenario is that it’s a state attack that will utilize the information to perform social engineering on important federal employees and ex-employees in an effort to gain access to sensitive information.

According to Engagdet:

Just how bad was the hack that compromised the info of 4 million US government workers? Exceptionally bad, if you ask anonymous officials talking to Reuters. They understand that the Office of Personnel Management breach exposed data going as far back in time as 1985, which could reveal what about 1.9 million staffers did after they left federal employment. It’s not certain exactly what was taken, but the hack may have exposed bank info, birthdays and Social Security numbers — the kind of sensitive content that could lead to breaches elsewhere.