Hack of US govt. agency exposes personal info of 237,000 amid a rising trend
Unidentified hackers have reportedly broken into computer systems of the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and accessed personal data of at least 237,000 former and current employees of the agency.
In an statement issued on Friday, the DOT did identify the possible source of the cyber attack against yet another US government agency, but insisted that the breach did not affect any transportation safety systems, local media outlets reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Informing the US Congress via an email about the hacking effort and the data breach, the DOT further stated that its initial investigation into the cyber attack isolated the breach to specific systems in the department used for administrative functions such as processing employee transportation benefits."
According to the report, the hacking effort struck TRANServe's transportation benefits processing systems, which reimburse some government employees for commuting expenses. It is not yet clear whether any of the personal information was used for criminal purposes.
The department further stated it was probing the breach and had blocked access to the transport benefits system until it was secured and restored. The breach, it added, affected 114,000 current employees and 123,000 former employees.
US federal agencies and their employees have increasingly been targeted by local and international hackers in the past months.
Two breaches at the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2014 and 2015 compromised the sensitive information of more than 22 million people, including 4.2 million current and federal employees, and the fingerprint data of 5.6 million of those people.
Hackers using software from SolarWinds and Microsoft to infiltrate US federal agencies broke into unclassified Justice Department networks and read emails from the Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security departments, according to US-based press reports, which further unveiled that nine federal agencies were hacked in 2021 alone.
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