Tag Archives: Govt hacks

According to Reuters, The company called KeyPoint, a “private company whose login credentials were used in hack attacks that looted the personal data of 22 million current and former federal employees” from the US Office of Personnel Management has now won a major contract for security clearance process from the new agency created because of the OPM hack, the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB). What could possibly go wrong?

In 2014, the US Office of Personnel Management was hacked (presumably by Chinese spies), and leaked 22,000,000+ records of Americans who’d applied for security clearance, handing over the most intimate, compromising details of their lives (the clearance process involves disclosing anything that could be used to blackmail you in the future). This didn’t come to light until 2015.

It’s still not clear how OPM got hacked, but signs point to a failure at one of its contractors, Keypoint Government Solutions, who appear to have lost control of their logins/passwords for sensitive OPM services.

In the wake of the hacks, the job of giving out security clearances has been given to a new government agency, the National Background Investigations Bureau.

NBIB is about to get started, and they’ve announced that they’re contracting out significant operations to Keypoint.

HT BoingBoing, Company suspected of blame in Office of Personnel Management breach will help run new clearance agency.