The email addresses of about 632,000 employees from the Justice and Defense departments were accessed in a hack earlier this year, Bloomberg reported Monday, adding to the number of organizations—including airlines, universities and other U.S. agencies—impacted by a series of data breaches largely blamed on a Russian-speaking criminal group.
KEY FACTS:
The accessed email addresses, links to government employee surveys administered by the agency and internal agency tracking codes, according to a report by the Office of Personnel Management obtained by Bloomberg.
Hackers obtained access through a file transfer program called MOVEit used by the data firm Westat, which OPM uses to administer employee surveys, according to the Bloomberg report.
Impacted employees at the Defense Department reportedly included officials from the Air Force, the Army, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff.
The hack—which occurred on May 28 and May 29—was characterized by OPM as a “major incident,” according to Bloomberg, though the agency believed that compromised data was “generally of low sensitivity” and was not classified.
Neither the Justice Department nor the Defense Department immediately responded to requests for comment from Forbes.
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