22 Million Government Workers Being Targeted By Ransomware Attack

In June of 2015, an anonymous source revealed that the Office Of Personnel Management (OPM), which administers America’s civil service, had been hacked. The breach, which was believed to be the work of the Chinese government, was one of the largest ever involving federal systems.

Now the motivation behind the attack is becoming clear. Initially, the stolen OPM data didn’t appear to be the sort that a state-sponsored hacker would target. Those individuals generally go after sensitive documents like blueprints, documents dealing with foreign and domestic policies, and military plans. Personally identifiable information (PII) isn’t usually on the radar.

So why did these hackers take it? Some of the data was used to launch additional attacks against defense contractors that resulted in the exfiltration of multiple terabytes of data.