The news that the FBI is investigating a data breach impacting the US House members and staff have been making headlines recently. The breach was on the DC Health Link’s servers, the organization that administers the health care plans of the US House members, their staff, and their families. Read all the details in the following lines.
Details of the breach
Upon discovering the security breach, the House of Representatives immediately took action by notifying affected people in an email from Catherine L. Szpindor, the US House Chief Administrative Officer, and notifying the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as reported by DailyCaller.
“DC Health Link suffered a significant data breach yesterday potentially exposing the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) of thousands of enrollees. As a Member or employee eligible for health insurance through the DC Health Link, your data may have been compromised,” Szpindor said.
“Currently, I do not know the size and scope of the breach, but have been informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that account information and Pit of hundreds of Member and House staff were stolen… It is important to note that at this time, it does not appear that Members or the House of Representatives were the specific target of the attack.”
The FBI was quick to launch a full-scale investigation into this matter as soon as they were informed to assess the scope and extent of the attack accurately; identity what data was stolen; contain it, recover it, or mitigate it; and take appropriate action against those responsible for its execution.
While the notification email didn’t show details about the stolen data, BleepingComputer had access to a part of it because one of the cyberthreat actors, known as IntelBroker, put the data up for sale on a hacking forum. A sample shows more than 170.000 affected persons, including names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, and more.
Cybersafety protocols must be implemented in all governmental networks moving forward to prevent similar breaches from occurring again. The FBI is looking into every single detail concerning this case.
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