Sensitive info of 8,000 people compromised in US EPA breach
A security breach at the Environmental Protection Agency that exposed the personal information of nearly 8,000 people involved servers that support a federal program to clean up hazardous waste, which is largely managed by information technology contractors, said an EPA employee who was briefed by agency management.
Specifically, the compromised servers house data from the Superfund program, established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites and implement cleanup plans. Information including Social Security numbers, bank-routing numbers and home addresses was exposed when an emailed attachment containing a virus was opened from a computer with access to the data housed on the servers, said Tom Link, an EPA employee and executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, who was briefed about the security breach by EPA senior management Thursday.
The EPA analysis "indicates it is extremely unlikely that any of that information was compromised or shared with anyone," said Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe in a memo emailed to employees, which was obtained by the Washington Business Journal.
