US Officials Say Government Assessing Massive Breach of Federal Personnel Data

Re: US officials report Massive Data Breach at Federal Human Resources Agency.....

Empirica said:

I most certainly do and I blame the Obama Administration for that also; considering most of those hackers are in the service of hostile foreign governments!

IMO; a cyber attack by a foreign government is an act of war which is an opinion shared by many!

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:lamo

I was wondering how you'd spin that to be Obama's fault.

Re: US officials report Massive Data Breach at Federal Human Resources Agency.....

polgara said:

Good morning, MMC. :2wave:

I'm not very familiar with "hacking." How can it be determined who is doing the hacking when it theoretically could be anyone on the planet? Do they leave some kind of "signature" or something? I know that businesses have been hacked, but I assume that would be for financial reasons - credit card info, etc. What interest would anyone have in some low level person working in a government office, as an example? What information might be useful to the hacker? This is surreal!

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I'll try to get a link in a bit, I think it is generally figured out by a sort of signature though. Not so much a "china was here," but I guess there are certain ways the hacks are done, bounced through certain nodes or what have you that can create a sort of "signature" style a certain group or country (etc.) uses. Then of course some like Anonymous/Lizard Squad/etc. actually leave text saying they did it, but those folk aren't hitting the government anyways, probably in part because they wouldn't be able to anyways.

As to the use, I feel China is trying to find people with security clearances and such. Possibly trying to find in particular people who may be doing espionage work for the US in China and/or it's partners. However purely guessing on that, not even sure if they could glean that from the data stolen.

Re: US officials report Massive Data Breach at Federal Human Resources Agency.....

coyotedelmar said:

I'll try to get a link in a bit, I think it is generally figured out by a sort of signature though. Not so much a "china was here," but I guess there are certain ways the hacks are done, bounced through certain nodes or what have you that can create a sort of "signature" style a certain group or country (etc.) uses. Then of course some like Anonymous/Lizard Squad/etc. actually leave text saying they did it, but those folk aren't hitting the government anyways, probably in part because they wouldn't be able to anyways.

As to the use, I feel China is trying to find people with security clearances and such. Possibly trying to find in particular people who may be doing espionage work for the US in China and/or it's partners. However purely guessing on that, not even sure if they could glean that from the data stolen.

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Greetings, coyotedelmar. :2wave:

China has already denied that it's them, and for some reason, I tend to believe them, because of the timing, but I'm probably wrong. I lean more to thinking it might be Russia or even homegrown, but I have no logical reason for that thinking, either. It will be interesting to learn who it might be, though, since who they seem to be targeting in government offices doesn't make sense in either the vast amount of people involved, or the level chosen to spy upon. That in itself could be a red herring to cover the real intent, though. I also wondered if this could be tied in somehow with the Hillary hacker. Puzzling....