The Office of Personnel Management has announced that more fingerprints have been stolen from their database than originally believed.
The estimated number of individuals whose fingerprints were stolen in a breach this year has increased from 1.1 million to 5.6 million, OPM spokesman Samuel Schumach said on Wednesday. “Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited,” Schumach said. “However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves.”
Schumach also said the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Defense Department and other intelligence agencies would assess the potential for misuse of the information.
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This year, the OPM found that its system was breached by hackers linked to China. Initially, the agency announced that 4.2 million people had their classified security clearance information exfiltrated from the system. Later on, it expanded to 21.5 million.
Wednesday’s announcement applies strictly to a subset of those who already had their information stolen, and therefore does not increase the overall figure. OPM said it will send letters notifying those whose fingerprints were lost.
In a statement, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., accused the OPM of a “news dump,” and said that Americans should not trust the agency. “Today’s blatant news dump is the clearest sign yet that the administration still acts like the OPM hack is a PR crisis instead of a national security threat,” Sasse said. “The American people have no reason to believe that they’ve heard the full story and every reason to believe that Washington assumes they are too stupid or preoccupied to care about cybersecurity.”
UPDATE: House Oversight Commitee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, piled on in his own statement: “OPM keeps getting it wrong. This breach continues to worsen for the 21.5 million Americans affected. I have zero confidence in OPM’s competence and ability to manage this crisis. OPM’s IT management team is not up to the task. They have bungled this every step of the way.”
