Washington D.C. office, USDA gets hacked. Possible Personal Information Breach

June 22, 2006

An urgent Employee Notification was sent out on June 21, 2006 by Boyd Rutherford, Assistant Secretary for Administration with the USDA.

The memorandum was to inform all employees that an unauthorized third party had accessed a USDA computer system affecting Washington D.C. based employees and contractors.

The memo stated, “On Tuesday June 20, 2006, computer forensic examiners briefed me regarding an unauthorized intrusion of the USDA information systems used to maintain and issue identification cards for Washington, D.C., employees, contractors, and retirees. The examiners verified that the systems had been accessed but could not confirm or deny whether the database had been viewed or downloaded. “

“Upon being informed of the intrusion, USDA management requested its forensic specialist, as well as the Office of Inspector General, to analyze the hard disk drives of the impacted systems and determine the extent of the intrusion”

"Until such time as a final determination can be made, USDA is taking every precaution to safeguard its data systems and inform potentially impacted employees of this event. Again, only Washington, D.C. area employees were impacted by this incident.”

The memo went on to notify all impacted employees that they would receive a letter notifying them of what measures they could take to protect themselves against identity theft.

People who belive they may be affected by the data breach can go to www.firstgov.gov and an incident hotline has been set up at 1-800-333-4636 (FED-INFO) which is available Monday through Saturday between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Source: USDA GOV documents