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OPM Says 5.6 million Fingerprints Stolen In Cyberattack

Posted by samzenpus on from the bad-to-worse dept.

mschaffer writes: The Office of Personnel Management data breach that happened this summer just got a little worse. The OPM now says that 5.6 million people's fingerprints were stolen as part of the hacks. The Washington Post reports: "That's more than five times the 1.1 million government officials estimated when the cyberattacks were initially disclosed over the summer. However, OPM said Wednesday the total number of those believed to be caught up in the breaches, which included the theft of the Social Security numbers and addresses of more than 21 million former and current government employees, remains the same."

6 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. If you are going to steal... at least mess up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    In stealing the real finger prints. Should have randomly wlked the databases and reassign all finger-prints (even better individual fingers) to other persons, also other info (partial phone numbers, name, dates, what not) . So database would be worthless - trancate the SQL database logs a few times to be sure. :)

    See if the backup actually works or not. :)

    If you do not restore your database, how do you know it works??

  2. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    I demand that we vigorously close the barn door by implementing a robust biometric authentication infrastructure to prevent this from happening again!

  3. NOT Stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    This can't be stealing - the originals are still there !

    It's just that they made a copy of the data.

    --- RIAA

  4. That's just great... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Chinese have my background investigative report and my fingerprints for my government job. Next they will be shutting down the government for no reason.

  5. Infamous last words by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can have my fingerprints when you pry them from my cold, dead.....oh.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  6. Re:Credentials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The OPM is emailing the people affected, advising them to change their fingerprints.

    The advice comes with guidelines for proper fingerprint security, such as having a fingerprints at least ten digits long, with at least one loop, one whorl, one arch, and one "special character". Also, it's recommended to never re-use your fingerprints for multiple sites, and to change your fingerprints at least once every 90 days, being sure to never re-use any of your last ten fingerprints."