By Ankit Panda
A former NSA and CIA chief outlines the damage the OPM hack could unleash.
Retired General Michael Hayden is somewhat of an authority on spycraft, having led both the U.S. National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency over his long career. So when he notes that the recent breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management—in which the personal information and background information of millions of current and former U.S. federal government employees was stolen by attackers presumed to be based in China—was a “tremendously big deal,” people will listen.
Hayden noted that the OPM data was a “legitimate foreign intelligence target.” Hayden continued: “To grab the equivalent in the Chinese system, I would not have thought twice. I would not have asked permission…This is not ‘shame on China.’ This is ‘shame on us’ for not protecting that kind of information.” Highlighting a possible use case for the information, Hayden noted that the information could help China recruit spies in the United States—a deeply troubling outcome for the United States.
To clarify, the data taken from the OPM includes a wide range of personal data, ranging from the financial histories of federal government employees to names of their family members, and critically, their foreign national contacts. Experts worry that the information could be used to pressure Chinese citizens affiliated with U.S. government employees, or for the purposes of blackmailing federal employees. Additionally, social security numbers in the OPM’s database were unencrypted.
Read the full story at The Diplomat