Navy says Personal Data of more than 134,000 Sailors was Hacked

The Navy says on Wednesday that personal data of 134,386 present as well as ex-sailors of U.S. Navy was compromised.

It was not known immediately when hack has happened, but Navy is raising a finger towards a compromised laptop of a contractor as the cause of data breach.

Navy was informed by the Hewlett Packard (HP) Enterprise Services that minimum one laptop used by the company's employees, which is under contract with Navy, was compromised. Nbcnews.com posted on November 23rd, 2016, saying that HP first informed the navy on 22nd October.

From that time onwards, the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) has been continuing the investigation. Vice Adm. Robert Burke, Naval Personnel Chief, said: "The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously -- this is a matter of trust for our Sailors. We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach."

ABC News was informed by one Navy official that breach was supposed to include only then names and social security numbers. The official added that the HPES contract was for the program called Career Waypoints, which Navy uses for the sailors to enlist again or apply for the new jobs of Navy.

As per the Navy officials, they planned to continue the probe and will soon provide more details to the ones who got affected. Navy officials are reviewing the options of credit monitoring service for all of those who are involved.

The Navy issued a statement saying that, "at this stage of the investigation, there is no evidence to suggest misuse of the information that was compromised."

The extent of data breach pales when compared to the huge cyberattack on federal government's Office of Personal Management which happened in 2015. That cyberattack -- which was supposed to be done by Chinese hackers - resulted in theft of personal data of over 22 Million people inside and outside government.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/30/2016