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U.S. Hack May Have Disclosed 18 Million Social Security Numbers

Katherine Archuleta, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), left, and Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the OPM, swear in to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the OPM data breach in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2015. — Katherine Archuleta, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), left, and Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the OPM, swear in to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the OPM data breach in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2015.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

By

Chris Strohm

June 24, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

The agency that manages U.S. government personnel records is investigating whether Social Security numbers for as many as 18 million people were taken in the massive cyber-attack revealed in recent weeks, the director of the federal jobs agency told a congressional hearing Monday.

“The 18 million refers to a preliminary, unverified and approximate number of unique social security numbers in the background investigations data,” Katherine Archuleta, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, testified.