U.S. Pulls Spies from China after Hack

           The United States began pulling spies out of Beijing in response to a cyber attack launched on the United States database exposing data of approximately 21.5 million government workers.  The United States firmly believes China is responsible for the breach in security which consequently disclosed 5.6 million government employee fingerprints. The information that China allegedly stole can be deduced to discover which government employees are spies, and as a result, endangering numerous lives.

          The information stolen not only identifies embassy personal who are actually intelligence agents’, but also future agents’ identities.  This breach threatens the lives of the current spies as well as compromises future opportunities to gather Intel on potential actions of the Chinese government.  This places the United States in a difficult position as the country will no longer have the advantage it once had.  The United States cannot send the same agents back to Beijing, as their identities have been exposed; therefore, the country will have to refigure their plan to learn potential actions China may pursue. This grave accident has exemplified the importance of maintaining proper security for such critical information.

          Approximately 5.6 million government employee fingerprints were exposed. Numerous areas of information were exposed in the breach of 21.5 million employees, such as Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, passwords and more. What makes the 5.6 million bio-metric exposures a higher concern is that finger prints are permanent. They cannot be replaced like Social Security numbers or passwords, they are forever. As a result, this will potentially generate repercussions for years. It is said that, “(The) interagency working group including experts from law enforcement and the intelligence community will review ways that the fingerprint data could be abused and try to develop ways to prevent that from happening.” I find it odd that the government was not more careful with 21.5 million fingerprints.  

            The attack was allegedly launched by the Chinese in Beijing. Even though the speaker for Chinese Foreign affairs, Hong Lei, denied the attack, numerous people speculate the Chinese are establishing a database on Americans.  The United States has not placed public blame on China, as Lei stated they have “The Chinese government firmly opposes any forms of hacking.” There is no evidence to accuse China for the cyber attack.

            These articles demonstrate the importance of security with data and information with the progression of technology. The article does not explain why the government officials unofficially blame China. If the government did not believe it was China, then why did the U.S pull undercover intelligence agents from that nation? It also does not explain how the hackers accessed the information, whether they bypassed passwords, or went through a firewall.  With the progression of technology, databases become easier to manage and store information, which makes databases, arguably, more valuable. Security measures for databases, especially government databases, require precise attention and without it, will potentially cause serious repercussions for the future.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/technology/china-opm-hack-us-spies/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/09/23/opm-now-says-more-than-five-million-fingerprints-compromised-in-breaches/