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"Chinese hackers have reportedly struck again. This time it's the U.S. agency that stores personnel information about federal employees, the Office of Personnel Management.\nThe circumstances of the breach, first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, are still unclear, but a senior Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to Mashable that the U.S. government became aware of the breach in mid-March, and that at this point investigators have not \"identified any loss of personally identifiable information.\"\nSee also: 5 Biggest Computer Viruses of All Time\nThe hackers were apparently after the personnel files for tens of thousands of U.S. government employees who have applied to get security clearances, details that include foreign contacts, previous jobs and even intimate information such as past drug use. The attack was traced back to China, an anonymous government official told The New York Times, although there are no allegations \u2014 for now \u2014 that the hackers had ties with the Chinese government. \nWhy would they be interested in such information? Adam Segal, the Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations and expert on cyber-security and China, said that accessing such a data trove can allow hackers to prepare further attacks.\nThis attack would give the hackers \"a huge target base of people with clearance, plus the personal information to spear phish or use other social engineering techniques,\" he told Mashable.\nThe breach was revealed just as Secretary of State John Kerry is in China for the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, a bilateral meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials. The relationship between the two World powers have been strained in the last few months due to the alleged activity of state-sponsored Chinese hackers, and the U.S. decision to formally accuse members of the Chinese military of hacking crimes.\nIf this latest incident is true, it would be the last in a long list of breaches carried out by Chinese hackers against the U.S. government or U.S. companies. Just last year, Chinese hackers were accused of a years-long espionage campaign against several organizations in the United States, of stealing the designs of more than two dozen advanced U.S. weapons systems, and of breaching a Department of Energy database containing sensitive information about 104,000 people.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/07/10/chinese-hackers-breach-u-s-government-agency/>