The personal information of 237,000 current and former federal government employees was exposed in a data breach at the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The violation affected systems processing TRANServe transit services, which reimburse government employees for part of their travel expenses. It was not clear whether the personal data was used for criminal purposes.
USDOT told Congress Friday in an email seen by Reuters that its initial investigation into the data breach “limited the breach to specific systems in the department used for administrative functions, such as B. processing employee transfers”.
USDOT said in a statement to Reuters that the breach had no impact on transportation security systems. It was not said who might be responsible for the hack.
The ministry is investigating the breach and has frozen access to the transit benefit system until it is secured and restored, it said.
The maximum benefit subsidy is US$280 (approximately Rs.23,000) per month for federal employee commuter travel expenses. The breach affected 114,000 current and 123,000 former employees.
Federal employees and government agencies have been targets of hackers in the past.
Two breaches at the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2014 and 2015 compromised sensitive data of more than 22 million people, including 4.2 million current and federal employees, as well as fingerprint data from 5.6 million of those people.
Suspected Russian hackers using SolarWinds and Microsoft software to break into US federal agencies penetrated unclassified Justice Department networks and read emails in the Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security departments. Nine federal agencies were injured, Reuters reported in 2021.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
