OPM serves as the human resource department for the US government
Hackers that
breached US government databases stole the personal information of at
least 21.5 million people, officials said on Thursday.
Those
affected include government job applicants, federal contractors, and
over a million of their partners, the Office of Personnel Management
said.
The figure is more than five times higher than the number of people that were feared to have been affected.
The data breach, which came to light in April, was widely blamed on China.
Authorities in Beijing have publicly denied any involvement.
The breach prompted a series of hearings in Congress and widespread criticism of the state of US cyber defences.
Politicians from both parties demanded OPM boss Katherine Archuleta be fired.
House
of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said President
Barack Obama "must take a strong stand against incompetence in his
administration and instill new leadership at OPM".
Last
month, officials said personnel records of 4.2 million current and
former federal government employees had been stolen in an incident.
'No misuse yet'
On Thursday,
OPM said
that while investigating that breach they discovered additional
information had also been compromised, including the social security
numbers of 21.5 million individuals.
The stolen data also
includes health and financial information, criminal records, and the
names and addresses of government employees and their relatives.
Those
affected include 19.7 million people who underwent background checks
and 1.8 million others, mostly the partners of job applicants.
OPM serves as the human resource department for the
US government. The agency issues security clearances and compiles
records of all federal government employees.
The agency said that
it had "no information at this time to suggest any misuse or further
dissemination of the information that was stolen from OPM's systems."
But
it said that for anyone who underwent a background investigation in
2000 or afterwards "it is highly likely that the individual is impacted
by this cyber breach."
Last month, US intelligence chief James Clapper said China was the "leading suspect" in the massive data breaches.
His
comments came after three days of high-level talks in which China and
the US agreed to a "code of conduct" on cyber security issues.
Earlier
this week, US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said
China was "trying to hack into everything that doesn't move in America".
China has dismissed claims of involvement as "irresponsible and unscientific".
Title : Hackers 'stole data of millions of US government workers'
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