Week 4- the government hack

In July, there was a high profile hack of government employee data.  I chose to write about this for a couple of reasons.  First, a friend of mine was affected (more below).  Second, it's pretty gutsy to hack the US government.

The hack itself started in May with an attack on 100,000 IRS records.  The hackers were able to get social security numbers, birthdays, and addresses.  By July, it spread throughout much of the government and to 22.1 million people that were affected.  Official sources have claimed China is at least partially responsible for the attack.

My friend worked for the IRS.  He got a letter from them saying that his information was taken.  We briefly discussed it and wondered what he was supposed to do about it.  He said that he hasn't worked there in about 4-5 years, and was surprised that they still had information on file for him.  

But it's bigger than one individual.  It takes a lot of guts to hack into the US government.  And I have a suspicion that might amplify this- I suspect that the two attacks are connected and it wasn't dealt with quickly enough the first time to shut down any opportunity they had the second time.  It's not uncommon for an attack to go quite some time before it's discovered.  Meanwhile, information continues to leak out.  With the bureaucracy of the government, I would not be surprised to find out that they either didn't discover the breach quickly, or they didn't act quickly.

References:

Mindock, C. (2015, July 9). US Government Cyber-Attacks Were Biggest In History, Follows Several High-Profile Hacks; 22.1 Million Files Compromised. Retrieved September 21, 2015, from http://www.ibtimes.com/us-government-cyber-attacks-were-biggest-history-follows-several-high-profile-hacks-2002565