Anonymous entities have obtained the personal information of 237,<> current and former federal government employees through a widespread data breach at the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), according to a Reuters report.
Transportation Benefit Processing Systems (TRANServe) that reimburse government employees for some transportation costs have been hacked. It was not clear whether any of the personal information was used for criminal purposes.
The U.S. Department of Transportation notified Congress on Friday in an email, noting that its initial investigation into the data breach found that "the breach was in certain systems of the department used for administrative functions, such as processing employee transfer benefits."
Reuters quoted the U.S. Department of Transportation as saying in a statement that the breach did not affect any of the transportation safety regulations. The statement did not say who might be responsible for the breach.
The department is investigating the violation and has frozen access to the transport benefits system until it is secured and restored, the ministry said.
The maximum benefit allowance is $280 per month for federal employees' transportation costs. The breach affected 114,123 current employees and <>,<> former employees.
Federal employees and agencies have been the target of hackers in the past, and two breaches at the U.S. Personnel Management Office (OPM) in 2014 and 2015 breached sensitive data of more than 22 million people, including 4.2 million current and federal employees, along with fingerprint data of 5.6 million of those individuals.
Several reports of hackers from Russia have been indicted, stating that they used SolarWinds and Microsoft programs to penetrate US federal agencies, hacked Justice Department networks, especially unclassified departments, and read emails at the Department of Treasury, Trade and Homeland Security. The report also stated that 9 federal agencies were hacked in 2021.