30,000 DOD Civilian and Military Personnel Affected by Data Breach

• The Department of Defense has suffered a data breach according to an official statement by the Pentagon.
• The investigation of the incident is still underway, and not many details have been made public yet.
• The breach first discovered on October 4 and was made official in the following week.

An official statement was made by the Pentagon on Friday revealing some information about a data breach suffered due to one the Department of Justice’s third-party contractors. Officials are still investigating the security incident, but according to initial estimates, approximately 30,000 Department of Justice military and civilian personnel have been affected.

The official statement revealed that the data breach occurred on October 4 and the attacker or attackers managed to break into a third-party contractor’s Pentagon network account and stole travel data of Department of Defense personnel. Payment card data and personal information have also been stolen. The name of the contractor whose account was compromised has not been revealed as the investigation is still ongoing.

Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, a Pentagon spokesman revealed “The department is continuing to assess the risk of harm and will ensure notifications are made to affected personnel” and that the department “has taken steps to have the vendor cease performance under its contracts.”

Personnel who have been affected by the incident will be notified personally as the investigation confirms those who have been affected in the coming days. Those affected will be offered free fraud protection services as per the US legislation. According to a recent report, 4,553,172,708 records have been affected due to data breach incidents, and 6,947,320 records are affected on an average every single day.

The data breach may be linked to the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which revealed that the next-gen weapons built by the Pentagon are easily hackable due to lack of proper security measures. More details about the incident will be revealed once officials identify the extent of damage done and the people responsible for the attack are caught.

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