The U.S. Postal Service has been hacked, reports said on Monday
According to Reuters, over 800,000 employee information has been compromised including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses, beginning and end dates of employment and emergency contact information.
The Postal Service also admitted that some data on customers who had contacted their call center Postal Service Customer Care Center by telephone or email from January until Aug. 16 may also be stolen.
Time said in a separate report that the customer data that may be compromised include their names, addresses, telephone numbers or e-mail addresses but it is still not clear if their credit card information was stolen.
USPS media relations manager David Partenheimer was quoted by Time saying that the intrusion had a limited scope and all of their operations are still "functioning normally."
"We began investigating this incident as soon as we learned of it, and we are cooperating with the investigation, which is ongoing. The investigation is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and joined by other federal and postal investigatory agencies," Partenheimer added.
USPS noted that their employees have already been notified. The postal service also vowed to give them credit monitoring services for a year with no charge.
The intrusion was discovered in September and was allegedly perpetrated by "a sophisticated actor who did not appear to be interested in identity theft or credit card fraud," as reported by Washington Post.
George Kurtz, a cyber security expert from CrowdStrike, said the postal service was hacked since it has a lot of information and has "great value."
"The U.S. Post Office moves billions of letters each year and all of that is captured digitally...The information flow of where letters and packages and correspondence are going and who is talking to whom is very interesting to them," Kurtz was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Forrester Research official Edward Ferrara told Reuters that the data stolen from the postal service may be used for secondary phishing attacks. It may also be used to get data on the cyber defenses of the government, he added.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe meanwhile assailed the attack. "It is an unfortunate fact of life these days that every organization connected to the Internet is a constant target for cyber intrusion activity...The United States Postal Service is no different. Fortunately, we have seen no evidence of malicious use of the compromised data and we are taking steps to help our employees protect against any potential misuse of their data," Donahoe told Washington Post.
U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings said in his letter written to Donahoe that these attacks highlight the need to continuously improve data security.
Other cyber attacks that have recently been perpetrated include the hacking incidents on retail outlets Home Depot and Target Corp.