According to CrowdStrike, an IT security company, China's intelligence agency is creating a database similar to Facebook of personal data of United States government employees.
The data was stolen through various high-profile data breaches in the United States, including attacks on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and health insurance networks Anthem and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.
Dmitri Alperovitch, the founder of Crowdstrike, told Fox News that the Chinese hackers are developing an exhaustive profile of United States government employees, which he said could be used to cause public embarrassment and can force people to work for the Chinese government instead.
"It's, in effect, a private version of Facebook with much more detail about your life than even Facebook has that the Chinese now have access to," Alperovitch said.
According to Fox News, the most sensitive data that was stolen in the data breach on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is the Standard Form 86, with the security clearance application that is 127 pages long essentially serving as a road map to a person's life. The SF-86 contains very detailed data on all things regarding the person, such as previous home and work addresses, family members, intimate health information and drug history.
According to a source in law enforcement working closely with investigation on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management data breach, the scope of stolen data makes the issue a "generational problem," with a big concern on the possible impact on the family, friends and associates of individuals affected by the data breach. Particularly, the information on the children of the affected people could be used against them, the source said, through targeting the children and blackmailing.
Alperovitch said that the information collected now could be used at a later time, even decades later, for espionage activities.
Concerns have also been growing regarding the response of the United States government on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management hack, as an intelligence source told Fox News that the problem is not something that can easily be fixed with credit monitoring, which refers to the current program of the government that provides victims of credit and identity theft with free monitoring services.
